Mark my words. In response, MSFT is going to buy Square Enix.
Sony already makes a ton of big cinematic games.
This may seem like a strength for Sony but they are lacking in many other categories because they focused so heavily into those big games. Sony hasn’t released a big fps game in years so a Bungie purchase makes sense… while a Square Enix purchase makes no sense given Sony’s already huge strength in that area combined with how mixed the quality of Square’s games are these days (remember that Avengers live service game?). I think the quality issues recently scares off Microsoft too.
Honestly I think Sony will try to buy out Apex Legends and it’s devs from EA (why not double down on another studio who knows how to do live service), aquire Arc System Works (along with a few small fighting game studios to compliment Sony’s purchase of Evo) and attempt to convince Nintendo that a merger is a smart business move.
Nintendo is over an barrel right now. They dodged a bullet with the Switch like they did with the Wii and they know it. Shoehorning gameplay mechanics in based on hardware features/quirks annoyed both players and devs which is a habit Nintendo is only recently starting to break. Their recent attempt at their own gamepass is going horribly for them let alone having a poor online service. A 50/50 chance of failure again scares them. It’s even scarier than that now because Iwata isn’t there anyone to navigate these waters.
I can appreciate that they are a bit compromised between the missteps and Iwata, but the market doesn’t seem too concerned based on their stock price, which is down a bit from an all-time high during the pandemic.
They have been around a long time, and play a much longer game than the other console manufacturers. Sony’s been in gaming for what, close to 30 years? Microsoft in some form since their early days, which we can call 40ish years. Nintendo has been in the games biz for a mind boggling 133 years. Enough that they don’t always seem to obey the same “laws of physics” that other console manufacturers are beholden to. The Wii should have been a miserable failure, and not the runaway success it was early on - for sure they could have done a lot better though.
I’m interested to read whatever sources make you think they are in dire straights. I don’t see them under any particular existential threat. Especially given their significant cash reserves.
More perspective on the Nintendo topic - the comments are a similarly good debate about the relative merits of Nintendo’s fortunes as an independent company:
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