The trend of smaller companies being acquired by gaming tech giants is continuing. A couple of days ago, Embracer Group completed its acquisition of Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal, Square Enix and Montréal. Prior to that, Sony announced that it is acquiring Bungie for a cool $3.6 billion, and of course, we are all probably well-aware of Microsoft"s ongoing, massive $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. Now, Sony has entered an agreement to buy a mobile game developer.
The latest company to join the PlayStation Studios family is Savage Game Studios. The value addition of this acquisition seems obvious. PlayStation Studios is already well-entrenched in the home console market, cloud, PC, virtual reality, and more recently, TV. One major missing piece of this puzzle is the mobile market and this is the segment that this acquisition is targeting.
The acquisition has also led to the birth of the PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will be focused on creating "additive" gaming experiences for mobile. Sony"s head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst has noted that:
Our mobile gaming efforts will be similarly additive, providing more ways for more people to engage with our content, and striving to reach new audiences unfamiliar with PlayStation and our games. Savage Game Studios is joining a newly created PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will operate independently from our console development and focus on innovative, on-the-go experiences based on new and existing PlayStation IP.
In terms of what"s next, Hulst has confirmed that Savage Game Studios is already worked on a PlayStation-branded "AAA mobile live service action game", but hasn"t revealed more details yet.