Sony paid $229 million for Insomniac Games

An interesting article from gamesindustry.biz about the acquisition of Insomniac Games by Sony. It is reported that Sony paid $229 million dollars for the studio.

That is a lot of money. With big budget titles rarely crossing the $100 million mark, and Insomniac Games making games for less than $20 million a pop (seeing as they do not feature in the list of most expensive video games to make), it is tremendous what market value the clout of the studio alone has. The fact that they make good games that sell well clearly played the biggest part of the acquisition most probably. That and their IP.

For context, this is the 14th highest amount paid (and reported on) for a games studio. The list of most expensive game studio acquisitions are as follows:

Acquirer Target Year Deal Value
Zhongji Holding DianDian Interactive 2014 960,000,000
Churchill Downs Incorporated Big Fish Games 2014 885,000,000
Electronic Arts BioWare and Pandemic Studios 2007 775,000,000
Electronic Arts PopCap Games 2011 750,000,000
Electronic Arts Jamdat Mobile 2005 680,000,000
Disney Playdom 2010 563,000,000
Zynga NaturalMotion 2014 527,000,000
Nexon Gloops 2012 486,000,000
DeNA ngmoco 2010 400,000,000
Electronic Arts Playfish 2009 400,000,000
Tencent Riot Games 2011 400,000,000

Interesting to note that, of this top 10 list, only two studios are “proper” games studios, with the rest being all mobile game studios.

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This can/should be an article! Want to co-author one with me?

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Yes sure we can totally do that!!

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I demand graphs and pie charts and all the other goodies

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Seconded!! And they’d better be animated and fluid too!

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And in colour!

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Your suggestions are noted.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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Discussion continues here:

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Where does Microsoft / Mojang for on the list?

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I’ve refactored the list for the article. Mojang is in there now. Wikipedia breaks its tables down into “above $ 1billion”, “above $100 million” and “above $1 million”.

Mojang is clearly in the “above $1 billion” section.

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So, have the acquisitions helped the companies that bought them? Because I remember a discussion on StockWatch one evening where they said that large mergers almost never deliver the value they promise.

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