Sony bought Insomniac for $229 Million–and that was mostly in cold, hard cash

In August last year, Sony purchased Insomniac Games, developer of the PS4-exclusive Spider-Man. That game has been the most successful superhero game of all time, selling 13 million copies. Buying Insomniac was a logical move; the developer had worked with Sony on several exclusive games and franchises before, including Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, and Resistance. Insomniac branched out a little with games like Fuse for EA, and the originally Xbox One exclusive Sunset Overdrive, which itself laid the foundation for Spider-Man thanks to its interesting traversal mechanics.

“The decision to join forces with Sony extends far beyond familiarity,” Insomniacs Ted Price said at the time.

Our studio vision is to create experiences that have a positive and lasting impact on people’s lives. As we look ahead to our future, we know that joining the WWS family gives us the best opportunities to fully achieve that vision on a much larger scale. Further, we believe that Sony shares a similar vision to positively impact players’ lives, their employees’ lives and the games industry at large.

According to an SECC filing by Sony they paid $229 Million, mostly in cash, for the studio. That’s a bit of a bargain.

On November 15, 2019, Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary in the Game & Network Services (“G&NS”) segment of Sony, completed the acquisition of Insomniac Games, Inc. (“Insomniac Games”), a game developer.

The consideration for this acquisition of 24,895 million yen (229 million U.S. dollars) was mainly paid in cash. The amount may be adjusted by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2020, based on the final closing date financial statements of Insomniac Games. As a result of this acquisition, Insomniac Games has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony.

For reference, that’s less than the $315 million that EA paid for Titanfall developer Respawn (whose work on Apex Legends and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order has shown the value of that acquisition). It’s also less than the amount of money that consumers have spent funding Star Citizen. To date, the ambitious space sim has collected over $267.5 million in crowdfunding – and that excludes any of the private money that’s helped keep Cloud Imperium Games afloat since it was founded in 2012. Star Citizen has been in development since 2011. To be fair, back then it was a small group of developers working on a concept to gain Kickstarter funding, but has been fully funded since November 2012.

Last Updated: February 11, 2020