It seems that someone was in the mood to play a practical joke on the tech fraternity as many woke up to headlines reading “Microsoft acquires Sony Corp”, including Sony’s gaming division Playstation. Many frantically rushed to online news portals trying to corroborate the story, however, could not find multiple sources confirming the same.
Turns out it was a false alarm. Microsoft has NOT acquired Sony and neither companies have released an official statement on the same as yet.
What really happened?
As per an HT Tech report, the ‘fake news’ was first broken by Spanish portal ‘Microsofters’ and translated into English by EN24 which stated that American tech giant Microsoft had acquired Sony Corp for a sum of $130 billion. A deal that also incorporated Sony’s other divisions into the contract.
The report stated that Microsoft has also acquired Sony Pictures, Sony Music, its mobile division, its gaming division, patents, camera and even its TV division. What made the news so convincing to most of the people who read it was the mention of Microsoft’s Vice President of Gaming, Phil Spencer.
What also could have spurred on a few people to get the story online quickly is the fact that Microsoft has recently acquired gaming developer Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion. The acquisition made Microsoft the sole decision-maker in the company that has been responsible for popular video game franchises such as Wolfenstein, The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout.
Later, multiple news organisations confirmed that the report was a fake one and Microsoft has not bought Sony.
The rule of fake news
Fake news on the internet spreads faster than genuine news and that’s exactly what happened in this case. The report was picked up by Exchange4Media but they deleted the story later after news surfaced of the claim being a false one.
Secondly, neither Sony Corp nor Microsoft confirmed this report nor released any official statement when journalists reached out them about the alleged acquisition.
In the end, what could have been the biggest news of 2020 turned out to be nothing but false claims by a few media outlets. Since this is still a developing story we’ll keep an eye of for any updates that come from either Microsoft or Sony.
