I'm pretty sure that this gen Sony didn't do shit to their own studios and most importantly as Shinobi said yesterday, they don't mandate nothing to their first party studios on what games to. Make.
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Bloomberg: Sony weighing bid for Leyou Technologies (Warframe, LoTR etc)
- Thread starter gofreak
- Start date
I'm taking a guess (as I don't know how these things work), but it makes sense to just move the employees over to SIE with them acting as the publisher. Not sure if it's that easy to transfer publishing rights though.
User Banned: Platform Warring, trolling
This thread has an extremely high Wall of Shame potential, comparing and contrasting responses of posters between this thread and the various Microsoft acquisition rumours.
not really, its something they've been planning internally since late last year I believe
Makes sense, let's see what's going to happen, it would be an interesting purchase, since what is missing in SIE today are MP games.
Please do not derail the thread with this subject. In 10 minutes there will be a discussion of which publisher influences the developers the most.
Nah. Athlon publishes worldwide AAA console/PC multiplayer games.
Athlon Games has five people on LinkedIn so I don't really think they are a big player.
Profiles of Leyou subsidiaries, for fun :
Digital Extremes
Digital Extremes (DE) is a game development studio founded in 1993 and headquartered in London, Ontario, Canada. DE has developed or co-developed a number of AAA game masterpieces, such as the Unreal series (Epic Games published), the BioShock series (2K Games published), and the Darkness II (2K Games published).
DE has branches in California, in addition to the London headquarters, which covers all major departments of game development and distribution. Core game development team members have more than 15 years of average experience.
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Splash Damage
Splash Damage (hereinafter referred to as SD) is a 3A video game development company founded in 2001 by founder Paul Wedgwood and headquartered in London, England.
SD is particularly good at the development of shooting multiplayer games, as well as in the development of related action and strategy games. In the company's 16-year history, SD has developed/co-developed a variety of shooting AAA masterpieces including " Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "Doom" and "Gears of War".
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Athlon Games
Athlon Games is located in Burbank, Los Angeles, USA. Mainly responsible for the overseas PR publishment of all products of Leyou Technology Holdings Co., Ltd. (Leyou Group), branding marketing and continuously cooperating with major overseas media and game development companies. Dave Miller, former vice president of Warner Bros games, is responsible for the company's business.
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Kingmaker
Kingmaker (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. is headquartered in Beijing, China. The company's core staffs have served in Perfect World, Elex, Sohu Changyou, KongZhong, and other game companies, specializing in F2P game design and publishing, produced and published a number of successful products such as "Tian Long Ba Bu" and "Neverwinter Nights OL". The company is positioned in the global game market and is designed to produce AAA-level multiplayer online games, covering the PC and console game market.
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Radiance Games
Guangzhou Radiance Software Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2016, headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, mainly specializing in online game development for PC, console, mobile platform. The company's current work-Civilization Online, which is exclusively licensed by Take Two International GmbH. The company's core developers have worked for NetEase, Tencent, Perfect World and other prestigeous companies, and their average experience has been more than ten years. They are the first batch of personnel engaged in online game development in China.
Digital Extremes
Digital Extremes (DE) is a game development studio founded in 1993 and headquartered in London, Ontario, Canada. DE has developed or co-developed a number of AAA game masterpieces, such as the Unreal series (Epic Games published), the BioShock series (2K Games published), and the Darkness II (2K Games published).
DE has branches in California, in addition to the London headquarters, which covers all major departments of game development and distribution. Core game development team members have more than 15 years of average experience.
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Splash Damage
Splash Damage (hereinafter referred to as SD) is a 3A video game development company founded in 2001 by founder Paul Wedgwood and headquartered in London, England.
SD is particularly good at the development of shooting multiplayer games, as well as in the development of related action and strategy games. In the company's 16-year history, SD has developed/co-developed a variety of shooting AAA masterpieces including " Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "Doom" and "Gears of War".
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Athlon Games
Athlon Games is located in Burbank, Los Angeles, USA. Mainly responsible for the overseas PR publishment of all products of Leyou Technology Holdings Co., Ltd. (Leyou Group), branding marketing and continuously cooperating with major overseas media and game development companies. Dave Miller, former vice president of Warner Bros games, is responsible for the company's business.
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Kingmaker
Kingmaker (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. is headquartered in Beijing, China. The company's core staffs have served in Perfect World, Elex, Sohu Changyou, KongZhong, and other game companies, specializing in F2P game design and publishing, produced and published a number of successful products such as "Tian Long Ba Bu" and "Neverwinter Nights OL". The company is positioned in the global game market and is designed to produce AAA-level multiplayer online games, covering the PC and console game market.
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Radiance Games
Guangzhou Radiance Software Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2016, headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, mainly specializing in online game development for PC, console, mobile platform. The company's current work-Civilization Online, which is exclusively licensed by Take Two International GmbH. The company's core developers have worked for NetEase, Tencent, Perfect World and other prestigeous companies, and their average experience has been more than ten years. They are the first batch of personnel engaged in online game development in China.
maybe a couple of the subsidiaries like Splash Damage and Certain Affinity (if they choose to fully buy them) could be folded into SIE since they are studios more used to traditional pc and console development, but I imagine most of the Leyou business would remain as is, if not all really
Yeah, exactly. I suppose Sony would at least let them continue doing their thing with their games, no clue about the others.
Question then becomes: have them develop with relative (creative) freedom (but potentially exclusively for one platform), or rather have them definitely staying multiplat, but potentially with less development freedom?
But as I said, I don't know shit about the other corporations bidding, so that's me completely speculating here.
I meant from our perspective. Was just something they decided to change without really any obvious signs or need right? I just tied it up to them wanting more obvious branding than "WWS" or "SIE Presents" but making SIE less just PlayStation and Sony's entire gaming branch (so PlayStation, PC and Mobile) kinda makes a lot of sense, especially if they seal this.
It's not about Warframe alone.
But the prospect of having Warframe with a bigger budget behind is too good to happen, the game is already amazing.
Given we're talking a circa $1.2b acquisition here, they're not going to devalue that instantly by making everything they do exclusive to PS5 or whatever. This is about a bigger picture, the future of SIE as a service rather than device centric organisation. We're already seeing hints at that with their PC ports and partnership with Azure.
Well, Nokia used to be a toilet paper manufacturer. (Maybe they'll have to return to that soon.)
Actually, judging by Leyou's portfolio it appears that it makes great sense for Sony if they really want to diversify and get into multiplayer/service gaming.
They did, still we know for a fact that they don't mandate or impose nothing to their studios. Shinobi reiterated it on another thread yesterday I think, they don't micromanage anything opposed to what other big publishers do.
Yea they r good at what sony is lacking and they r 6 big studios
Warframe by itself is just a small part of the value of this deal. Leyou owns multiple studios with multiple teams, along with the rights to multiple IP, and several stakes in other companies.
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uhh didn't certain affinity developed part of halo's multiplayer since halo 2 and was made from ex-bungie employees?
Right.
How does closing a studio negate that? lol.
At the end of the day, businesses make business decisions.
Yep, what I'm expecting is Warframe to continue operating as normal, Splash Damage and Certain Affinity to be folded into Playstation studios probably.
37Games owns SNK, these guys just help with publishing outside Japan as Athlon Games.
One of the other companies bidding for Leyou is Century Huatong, which is a company that originally made car parts. Mostly these are reverse listings, were private capital is used to buy a listed company, I guess to avoid the complicated legal procedures of listing a company.
From the info I remember going around the the time of the acquisition of SNK, apparently there are some issues when trying to set up shop to operate from HK by a foreign entity.
So they bought that chicken or whatever company just to get a foothold in the region and built up from there.
Well, Guerilla Games used to release Killzone games for like 9 years and then came Horizon, which I'm pretty happy about.
I liked the Killzone franchise, too, but it was really refreshing to see them do something else and it paid off for them.
These hypocrites exist in every thread, because the "It's only good when they do it" narrative is a typical console/platform warrior behavior.
There's also a lot of people who don't like these acquisitions at all, no matter who is doing them, and I'm one of those people. It simply sucks seeing companies and thus games going from 3rd to 1st party.
Yup. They worked on DLC for Halo 2, Halo: Reach, Halo:CEA and Halo 4. They were also responsible for Halo 2 Anniversary MP in the MCC.
Despite all this, they actually have a pretty varied portfolio.
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Interesting... Now that you say that, it makes sense with it being HK.
Interesting... Now that you say that, it makes sense with it being HK.
Sony don't really touch IP they didn't create (RIP Sunset Overdrive 2). I would imagine they'd perhaps reboot it if the dev really wanted to, but it would be a separate work from what came before.
Yeah I never can think of a Sony acquisition as a good thing because of this
Guerrilla for me is like Naughty Dog or Santa Monica. Sure, they could make a great game with a great multiplayer. But their bread and butter has become storybased singleplayer, and it shows in the people playing their games. There is nothing like Zipper anymore, where the first focus was multiplayer. Compared to Microsoft, where I think Halo and Gears, even though they also have singleplayer components.
(I know these studio's all have done both offline and online, but the primary focus over the last couple of games shows a trend and something missing in SOny's arsenal)
Details on the SNK ownership situation are light and practically non-existent. Not that I don't believe you, but do you have sources that state the Leyou deal is only for publishing rights outside Japan? Because I've seen multiple articles stating that Leyou essentially just bought a large stake of SNK flat out.
I said that Digital Extremes would be a good acquisition target years back, and lol.
Edit: lemme be smug for a sec.
Good call.
I said that Digital Extremes would be a good acquisition target years back, and lol.
Edit: lemme be smug for a sec.
My mom always told me to believe owls in suits.
Stocks don't go up if they make an acquisition, the stock being up is nothing to do with this.
It probably is tho. Everytime there's a rumor on big acquisition stocks always go up. I still remember Disney stock when the Fox acquisition was still a rumor.
A stock will go up if you consolidate a market (as was the case with Disney) since you are removing competition and price is deemed OK. However in general whenever you buy another company you pay a premium to the market price, unless there are real hard money synergies that compensate for this then the value of the acquirer goes down.
So they own 20% of Certain Affinity. If Somebody buys them, what does that mean for Certain Affinity? I assume they would still be multiplatform, but im not sure. Anybody know?
They'd probably continue whatever contract work they having going on currently simply because they'd be obliged to, but if that acquisition option Leyou has is still valid if Leyou itself is acquired Sony could just to buy Certain Affinity as well. It's real up to if Sony could do it and if if they can also want to do it.
Can they just simply buy them out though(Certain Affinity)? I would assume there would need to be a negotiation between the two? I am seeing that Leyou may have the option to buy them out for 150 million by the end of the year, but if another publisher were to buy them out, does that affect the contract?