Posts shared on Facebook and Twitter claim the technology company Microsoft has acquired its competitor Sony.

Microsoft acquires Sony… wth just happened!

— Harish Vaidyanathan (@harishv) December 29, 2020

Microsoft acquires Sony!
History re-written ????

— Kunall Gupta (@prioritizer01) December 29, 2020

Verdict: False

There is no evidence that Microsoft acquired Sony. The claim appears to have originated as a joke.

Fact Check:

The rumor that Microsoft has acquired its competitor Sony has been spreading on Facebook and Twitter in recent days.  For instance, a Twitter user commented, “Microsoft acquires Sony… wth just happened,” while one Facebook account shared a screen grab of what appears to be a news article reporting on the supposed acquisition of Sony “with all its divisions, including PlayStation.”

Sony Corporation has multiple divisions including gaming, electronics, music and entertainment, according to its website. Both it and Microsoft are prominent players in the gaming sphere, where Microsoft produces the Xbox gaming platform and Sony produces the PlayStation. Both companies recently released new gaming consoles, according to NPR. (RELATED: Has Anthony Fauci Ever Sat On Miscrosoft’s Board?)

There is, however, no evidence the acquisition occurred. The Daily Caller News Foundation didn’t find a press release announcing a move to that effect on either company’s website. Microsoft and Sony are also both global companies that, according to Forbes, pull in billions of dollars in profit, and if one were to acquire the other, it would certainly be covered by major news outlets, yet none have.

Mergers between two large companies often take months or even years to complete and sometimes require approvals from numerous government agencies. For example, mobile carrier T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint took about two years to finalize, according to NPR.

The inaccurate claim appears to have originated with a Spanish-language article published by the website Microsofters on Dec. 28. The article was then translated into English and published on the website En24 News. Both posts claim that Microsoft acquired Sony for $130 billion, though Sony was estimated to have a market value of $78.7 billion in May 2020 by Forbes.

The En24 News post is a near-identical translated copy of the Microsofters post but fails to include the last line in the original Spanish-language article that reads, “Feliz Día de los Inocentes!” The Day of the Holy Innocents is Mexico’s equivalent to April Fool’s Day, according to Mexico News Daily. That line would appear to indicate that the original Microsofters story was written in jest.

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