Sony buy $250 million stake in Epic Games

[Delicieuxz]

Sony has purchased $250 million worth of Epic Games - which it seems isn't nearly as much EG in 2020 as it was in 2012. Sony's $250 million purchase reportedly only bought it a 1.4% stake in EG, while Tencent purchased 40% of EG in 2012 for $333 million. The 1.4% of EG Sony got for $250 million suggests that EG's total valuation is around $17.9 billion. At the time of Tencent's 40% stake purchase, it would have been $825 million.

 

I guess Fortnite, which brought-in $1.8 billion in 2019, changed a lot for EG. Though, EG's total revenue for 2019 is reported to have been $4.2 billion.

 

Tim Sweeney continues to hold a majority stake in the company he founded. I'm interested to see what this means for the future of Sony games: Will they shift away from exclusives to deliver their games through the PC platform they also part-own now? Will PlayStation Now and Epic Games Store develop some formal connection to each other?

 

https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/09/sony-invests-250-million-in-fortnite-maker-epic-games/

 

[PCGuy_5960]

6 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

please do. anything to balance out tencent

Pretty sure $250M is nothing compared to what Tencent owns.

[Haro]

4 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I mean you can play PS exclusives on PC via PS Now.

Finally. My vita can stop collecting dust. 

[Haro]

Just now, VegetableStu said:

also new avatar who dat o_o

It's the one and only.

[Delicieuxz]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

I mean you can play PS exclusives on PC via PS Now.

Yeah, but it's low quality. I tried it for a month or two. It was decent at times, but inconsistent: Sometime the image quality would look appreciable, other times it would look very mushy (I think PS Now is 720p at its best, though). And the controls would sometimes have very minimal input latency, but other times it would be significant and interfered with my enjoyment of the games.

 

I don't know if it was the games, the presentation, or a mixture of both, but I didn't end-up finishing the few games I tried on PS Now, including God of War and Uncharted 4.

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

who dat

1 minute ago, TofuHaroto said:

It's the one and only.

Doug Dimmadome owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome. Thank you for locating my long lost son Dale Dimmadome, heir to the Dimmsdale Dimmadome fortune. If there's anything I can do to repay you for your kindness, all you need to do is ask!

[Bananasplit_00]

Damn I was hoping someone besides Tencent would end up with a fair chunk of Epic tbh

[Taf the Ghost]

Sony is behind everyone else on a cross-platform "ecosystem". Epic has, oddly enough, made it very clear they're going away from the Steam model. They've all but actually tossed in the towel in trying to compete against Gaben's juggernaut.  What EGS will become is more like a server infrastructure platform, so Epic can sell more than just a Graphics Engine. Think more along the lines of built-in servers as part of the service package. Maybe faster conversion to Playstation for Unreal Engine games. Stuff like that.

[Kisai]

19 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Sony has purchased $250 million worth of Epic Games - which it seems isn't nearly as much EG in 2020 as it was in 2012. Sony's $250 million purchase reportedly only bought it a 1.4% stake in EG, while Tencent purchased 40% of EG in 2012 for $333 million.

 

 

May as well buy a stake in it when it hasn't had an IPO. That means the true valuation is actually a bit of an Unknown, but it may also signal that they are going to. What would suck is if Tencent is able to get more of Epic. As much as I know people don't like the Epic Game Store itself, it would suck for a LOT of companies if a foreign company got ahold of the Unreal Engine and changed the licencing.

 

(Becuase that's been the thing, company A buys company B, and then raises company B's flagship product prices to extortionate levels.)