Sony Literally Cannot Match Microsoft’s Massive Bethesda Deal, Nor Do They Need To

God of War/The Last of Us Part 2 Sony

Yesterday, the video game industry earth shook when Microsoft announced it was buying ZeniMax and Bethesda for $7.5 billion. The deal gives Microsoft access, likely exclusive access, to an enormous slate of beloved video game franchises from Elder Scrolls to Fallout to Doom to Wolfenstein, and a common narrative I have seen take shape is people asking what Sony will do to “retaliate.”

Two things are true about this situation. First, Sony, while a huge player in the video game console and development space, is in no financial position to make a deal anywhere close to as big as this Microsoft purchase of Bethesda. Second, Sony is in a strong enough position with its first party studios and games where it…really doesn’t need to “respond” with some sort of purchase of its own.

For the first part of this, I think some people have lost track of the scale of these companies. PlayStation beat Xbox in the last console generation in terms of sales, and yet Sony and Microsoft are not remotely equivalent companies in terms of size. To put this in perspective:

Sony is not in a position to make a purchase even close to resembling Microsoft’s Bethesda acquisition (I know they don’t have to buy something with operating profit, but the above is giving a sense of scale). Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two, CPDR, even Bungie are probably all outside of Sony’s price range, as they’re just not in a position to make a move that big. One common suggestion I’ve heard is that Sony should buy the beleaguered Konami, which would get things like the Metal Gear and Silent Hill IPs back in their roster. That may be more “reasonable” to suggest, and yet even if it happened, it would be 5% as big of a deal as this Bethesda purchase, and Sony would only be buying IP rights, not actual studios ready to make massive AAA Silent Hill or Metal Gear games (Hideo Kojima has moved on to his own studio, you’ll recall, and he’d have to be his own “purchase.”) It’s just not a reasonable or relevant suggestion.

But Sony also…doesn’t need to do anything like this?

If Sony is lacking in any areas for this upcoming console generation, it’s probably not related to exclusives. Part of the reason Microsoft made this move in the first place was to destroy the narrative that their first party studios and games were lacking, while Sony has been in a position of strength for years. Sony has Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us), Santa Monica (God of War), Insomniac (Spider-Man), Guerrilla Games (Horizon Zero Dawn) and Sucker Punch (Ghost of Tsushima) all creating generational classics every year or so. They are in a perfectly strong position with those studios going forward, and Microsoft, despite all these acquisitions, has yet to put out the actual games that are a result of all this investment, and the quality of upcoming blockbusters like Avowed or Fable remain unknown. Most will have more confidence that say, Elder Scrolls 6 will be worthwhile, if that ends up being exclusive, but that is years and years away.

Sony’s concern should be trying to think more about the long game, as while they can do battle on game quality all day long, they have no answer for Xbox Game Pass, which is quickly taking over the industry, or the burgeoning xCloud service that will be inextricably linked to it. Microsoft just reported that Game Pass subscriptions jumped 50% in four and a half months from 10 million to 15 million. Sony does not have, and shows no interest in having, anything to compete with Game Pass, and if we get to a place where both Sony and Microsoft are both putting out good exclusives, and Microsoft’s are all “free” on Game Pass on launch day and Sony’s are $70 disc and digital downloads, that gap starts to widen.

So no, all this talk of Sony needing some high-profile studio purchase to match Microsoft is nonsense. They don’t need it, nor can they afford it, and if there’s anything they need to be doing to compete with Xbox, it’s figuring out answers for all its various service offerings, which are starting to leave PlayStation behind.

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