Today, during the quarterly conference call of Sony dedicated to investors and analysts, chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki was asked to comment the acquisition of Activision Blizzard from Microsoft. However, Sony does not want to make risky speculations on the matter. The company is focused on expanding into the VR market.
Specifically, Totoki-san said it is hard for Sony to say anything on the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. He added that the acquisition is not yet complete and Sony does not have a clear picture of what kind of changes will take place in the gaming business model. Because of this, Sony doesn’t want to think ahead of time.
Rather, they prefer to “pursue and execute their strategy at the right time”. Totoki-san also talked about the VRmentioning that there is room for evolution on both the hardware and software side, so Sony expects the market to expand.
Then Totoki-san talked about the Sony forecasts for PS5 sales in the next fiscal year (between April 2022 and March 2023), mentioning the fact that market demand is high enough for record sales to be achieved. Sony is working closely with supplier partner companies and hopes they can meet this record performance, but due to the continued disruption of the supply chain, it’s impossible to say for sure what will happen next year.
That said, Totoki-san said it’s important to have a target high level. By setting a lower lens, Sony could relax and actually aim for that. A more precise forecast for fiscal year 2022 will be shared later in the consolidated performance report.
Sony will carefully analyze its financial capabilities and risks to decide on any investment. Asked if they prefer buy the studios completely or make only partial investments, Totoki-san explained that if the goal of the acquisition is a good company, they would like to buy 100%. More limited involvement could cause problems in building a good partnership. This is exactly what happened with Bungie, which was bought for 3.6 billion.
