Rumor has it that Sony is watching Warner Bros. Discovery’s development studies for the future PlayStation acquisition as the company seeks to relieve its development teams and license its IPs. It’s, according to Kinda Funny’s Imran Khan, who claims to have heard “a decent talk” about WB Discovery “shopping their game development studios around.” Interestingly, it was exactly one year ago that we heard reports that WB wanted to do away with its game development wing, especially after its merger with Discovery, but the company rejected that report at the time.
Will there be more PlayStation acquisitions this year?
Sony has made it very clear that it has not finished acquisitions yet, but the company’s acquisitions have been on a completely different trajectory than Microsoft’s. The latter has bought entire publishers, while the former has focused on studies with which it has worked. If what Khan has heard is true, it seems that WB wants to sell its development studies, but only “license” popular IPs, which include big hits that are too many to mention. We’re talking about Mortal Kombat, Batman, Middle-earth, and the list goes on. WB currently owns a number of high-profile studios, including NetherRealm, Rocksteady, Avalanche Software, Monolith and TT Games.
Could not get enough confirmation to actually write a post about it, but I heard a decent talk this week about WB Discovery shopping around in their game development studios.
– Imran Khan (@imranzomg) April 29, 2022
Journalist Jeff Gerstmann has given credence to Khan’s tweet, saying he has also been hearing this rumor on and off for a while. As some Twitter users pointed out, well-known insider and co-journalist Jeff Grubb said a year ago that he had heard Microsoft was interested in buying NetherRealm and Rocksteady. But after Activision Blizzard and Bethesda deals (the former of which have already been scrutinized by the FTC), and rumors of Sony working closely with Hogwarts legacy developer Avalanche, we can only wonder what’s going on behind the scenes right now.
As for who else is interested in WB properties, Khan claims that Sony and Microsoft will be joined by EA, Take-Two, Tencent, NetEase and PUBG Corp.
In other news, the Gotham Knights may be skipping last-generation consoles, and Sony has released a rather confusing PS Plus conversion chart.