Nobody takes Nintendo seriously, not even Phil. That puppy dog face in court was just that. If you want a peek at Sony's future then look no further than Nintendo.
Literally everyone wants to be Nintendo.
The brand power is huge, they never make a loss on hardware, and their games never lose value to second-hand market pressure.
Microsoft is forced to amortise production costs for first-party games that launch day one on Game Pass, because physical sales have been dropping in many regions owing to economic pressures closing physical stores. On PC they have a natural advantage through Windows, but competitors exist there via digital storefronts.
Even with Game Pass Ultimate in the mix, Microsoft still hasn't managed to crack more than 45 million Game Pass users across Xbox and PC. Xbox Cloud Gaming has recently taken a backseat to building out more AI infrastructure on Azure. Hence, the recent measures to acquire bigger names like Bethesda and ABK to boost subscriptions and attempt to control digital game distribution in a significant way.
Sony can't put their new in-house games on PS Plus day one because physical sales are still key to how people engage with their brand, especially for the first time, but their PS Plus take-up is also around 40 million customers on both PS4 and PS5. Their push to PC is an effort to try boost sales of their in-house IP because it takes so long to make their games and claw back the money through physical sales.
MEANWHILE...
Nintendo has a massive audience that buys physical copies of games
for the novelty of it, while their digital publishing arm grows every year. Over 40% of their sales are digital, but there are over 120 million Switch owners out there.
Switch owners buy around 200 million copies of physical and digital games every year. In one quarter, Tears of the Kingdom made up half of all physical and digital sales for the Switch. Nintendo additionally makes money on everything associated with the Switch, including those fancy collectible travel pouches, screen protectors, special Joycons, and licensed skins
Sony's disclosure in court to the FTC on console ownership also highlighted that half of USA-based
PS5 owners typically had a Nintento Switch as their second console, with a gaming PC or laptop in the mix. Xbox owners do not typically own a second console.
Everyone in the industry pays attention to what Nintendo is doing, even if they are not directly competing.
Can totally see that happening. Its what they paid for Bungie.
Just thinking about this now, I think they're selling the Activision cloud rights to Ubisoft precisely to stop Sony from buying Ubisoft. They can argue that since Ubisoft holds the distribution rights to their content, it's anticompetitive as it would allow Sony to set terms on content that belongs to their competitor. The fact that it makes the CMA happy is just btw...
Everyone needs to look at this as Sony building
their publishing brand. They are not interested in acquiring another publisher because, as the market leader, it makes no sense for them to try do it all themselves and potentially push their partners towards Microsoft with the chilling effect.
The acquisition game for Sony is more first-party studios that already have deep tie-ins with the brand. From Software was a natural fit (before their independence and Tencent's money). Insomniac made sense because they had a long history with PlayStation. Bungie made sense because the vast majority of Destiny 1 and 2 players were/are on PlayStation.
If anything, Konami would be the kind of thing Sony is looking for, primarily for Metal Gear, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pro Evolution Soccer, and Silent Hill. And Castlevania.
