It appears Sony is looking into adding more studios to their first party lineup. In a interview with the Japanese publication Nikkei, as translated by Gematsu, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan stated that the company is looking into acquisitions of new game studios. Ryan cited more competition with companies like Google entering the video game market with Google Stadia.
Due to this, Ryan stated “content is becoming more important than ever before.” Sony’s commitment to the importance of content goes in hand with a recent Wall Street Journal interview with the company’s CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. Yoshida stated that the PlayStation 5 will be targeted towards “hardcore” gamers.
Sony does have a huge stockpile of unused IP as well. Jim Ryan stated, “Sony Interactive Entertainment has 25 years of experience in the games industry and has big assets.” Thus, new studios being brought under the SIE umbrella will have plenty of major IP to work with.
Though Ryan didn’t state what studios the company could be looking into acquiring, there are plenty of studios they already have well established relationships with. The biggest and most notable of these studios being Insomniac Games. Sony and Insomniac have been close for over 20 years. Sony has published, and owns, many of the IP Insomniac has worked on including the Spyro the Dragon trilogy on the original PlayStation, the Ratchet & Clank series, the Resistance franchise, and most recently last year’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. Thus, a pursuit to acquire the studio would make sense on Sony’s part.
On the other side of the console coin, Microsoft has spent the past year acquiring number of new studios. The most recent of which, Double Fine Productions, was announced at E3. With Sony now on the hunt for more studios to add to their lineup, the competition between first party exclusives on the next generation of consoles could be pretty fierce.