Sony sinks 13% on the stock market after Microsoft's ordeal with the purchase of Activision

Two players play FIFA.UNSPLASH

The shares of the Japanese electronics giant Sony, owner of PlayStation, have fallen 12.79% on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday, after investors welcomed the purchase by rival Microsoft as a jug of cold water. owner of the Xbox console, from the video game developer Activision Blizzard for 68,700 million dollars (60,326 million euros). The acquisition of the company, owner of popular sagas such as

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will allow Microsoft to considerably expand its catalog, and the markets consider that it could be a threat to Sony's leadership.

The Japanese technology company was the most traded company of the day and the one that registered the greatest collapse among the companies listed on the main selective of the Japanese stock market, the Nikkei, which groups the 225 most representative values. Sony investors reacted in this way to the operation between the two American companies, which represents the largest acquisition of Microsoft to date and a strong commitment to the video game sector, in which it is a direct competitor of Sony.

The purchase, valued at $68.7 billion, will become one of the 20 largest such deals in history when completed. It has yet to pass the scrutiny of antitrust regulators, but it has already made investors in the Japanese firm nervous. "They think Microsoft will make all Activision Blizzard games exclusive (to Xbox), hurting PlayStation sales and helping Microsoft close the

sales gap with Sony," industry consultant Serkan Toto said. the stock market crash in their social networks.

The purchase of Activision will considerably enrich the catalog of Microsoft's subscription system, Game Pass, which has 25 million members who pay a monthly amount for access to hundreds of titles. Games and network services are key for the Japanese giant (representing around 30% of its income), which has so far maintained a constant leadership thanks to the various generations of PlayStation. "Sony has a monumental challenge to face in this war of attrition," Amir Anvarzadeh, an analyst at Asymmetric Advisors, told Bloomberg.

The acquisition comes a year after Microsoft bought another prominent video game company, Bethesda, for $7.5 billion. These operations boost the Redmond giant to the third position in the world in the video game sector by income, behind China's Tencent and Japan's Sony.

Sony plans to publish on February 2 the accounts of its third fiscal quarter (from October to December, including the important Christmas campaign). "The drop in shares shows that investors are concerned that Sony will lose its lead if the industry moves away from the

-based model ," Morningstar Research analyst Kazunori Ito told Bloomberg. The

video game market is growing more and more, especially through mobile applications, on social networks and, although still incipient, on television platforms.

Other video game companies, such as EA or Take Two, registered increases of 2.66% and 0.96%, respectively, while Nintendo gave up 0.22% due to the possibility of more consolidation movements in the sector.