PlayStation may have an acquisition on the cards, but apparently it’s bigger than the recently rumored target of Kojima Productions. There has been plenty of consolidation in the video game industry in recent years, mostly spurred on by Microsoft’s acquisitions of large AAA developers. Leaving Sony in an arms race to build out their first party studios. The most recent acquisition rumors regarding Sony swirled around Kojima Productions. With that rumor laid to rest by Kojima himself, that hasn’t stopped the chatter. In fact, a prominent journalist says that the big Sony PlayStation acquisition is going to be bigger than that.
Kojima puts the rumors to bed regarding Sony and his studio
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but Kojima Productions has been and will continue to be an independent studio,” reads a tweet from Hideo Kojima on Twitter. While the famed game director put this rumor to bed, one journalist says that “it was never Kojima Productions. at least not as far as I’m aware. People hearing stuff, including me, never.. that was not a name that was thrown around. It was bigger than Kojima Productions,” Jeff Grub revealed on his GrubbSnax podcast.
While Kojima Productions would’ve made a lot of sense for Sony considering the long history of the developer’s game being closely associated with the PlayStation brand, there are some other high profile targets out there still. A number of studios could make sense for Sony as an acquisition target, though something on the level of what we’ve seen from Microsoft would be along the lines of a Bandai Namco or Square Enix type of deal. Either one would provide Sony with a large catalogue of games for their upcoming service expansions and put them closer to Microsoft’s burgeoning Game Pass roster.
That said, Sony isn’t as large of a business as Microsoft and likely doesn’t have the cash to go head to head with the software behemoth. Stay tuned as there’s likely still more to this story as the industry continues to see consolidation and shifts towards “Game Pass” style offerings across multiple platforms.
- This article was updated on April 16th, 2022
