SONY'S GAME PLAY: COULD MUSIC BENEFIT?

With Sony Corp. investing $250 million in Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, might we see more events like Travis Scott’s late April virtual concert performance that reached nearly 28m people?

Sony Corp. is investing $250 million, which gives it about 1.4% of the company that is valued at approximately $17b. Tencent owns 40% of the company; they invested $330m in 2012. Epic Games has raised $1.58b to date in three previous funding rounds; Disney invested in the company in 2017. Privately held, GamesBeat reported that Epic Games pulled in $4.2b in 2019 and the 2020 is forecast is $5b in revenue with EBITDA of $1b.

Sony Corp. Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida praised Epic’s graphics and game engine development, but suggested their partnership will extend beyond games. “Through our investment, we will explore opportunities for further collaboration with Epic to delight and bring value to consumers and the industry at large, not only in games, but also across the rapidly evolving digital entertainment landscape,” he said. That suggests Sony film and music may find their way into a pipeline that in Fortniite alone has 350m registered users.

While Epic is committed to being platform agnostic, Sony has to be hoping the investment gives the company a boost when it launches the PlayStation 5 game console later this year.