As Microsoft continues to buy up studios across the industry, Sony isn't far behind, as they have their own acquisition to announce. Bungie, known for developing the Halo series and more recently, Destiny, will be joining the PlayStation family. Sony purchased the team in a deal valued at $3.6 billion. While it may not be as staggering as the Activision deal that Microsoft made, it shows that these major studio buyouts won't be stopping any time soon.

Originally, Bungie started out as an independent developer, and would go on to be purchased by Microsoft in 2000, where they created Halo: Combat Evolved. They would stay with Microsoft until the year 2007, when they split and became their own private company. After that, Bungie signed a contract with Activision that lead to Destiny and Destiny 2.

Sony has prefaced the deal with the fact that Bungie, despite the acquisition, will remain an independent studio and publisher, and will continue to work on multi platform releases.

“I am absolutely thrilled to announce a new member will be joining the PlayStation family!

I’ve been a fan of Bungie for many years. I have admired and enjoyed the games that they create – and have great respect for their skill in building worlds that gamers want to explore again and again.

Bungie makes games with outstanding technology that are enormously fun to play. They also have unmatched dedication to the communities that play their games, and everyone at PlayStation, and PlayStation Studios, will be excited about what we can share and learn from them.

I have spent a great deal of time with the senior team at Bungie and it is clear their experience and skills are highly complementary to our own.We will be ready to welcome and support Bungie as they continue to grow, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this incredible team.“

Source

 

[SG854]

You're GODDAMN right.

Fuckin' Right about that mother fucker

 

[Xzi]

If this doesn't affect Destiny fans, then it doesn't affect anybody. Not exactly a strong counter-move to MS acquiring ActiBlizzard, assuming that's what they were going for. If Sony wanted to go for a kill shot, they should've bought FromSoft.

 

[subcon959]

If they want to strike back seriously they should probably try to get Take Two.

 

[FAST6191]

+1 to the not sure what they are seeing in this (IPs amounting to not a great deal* as most of it was frittered away or essentially work for hire). I imagine they have some nice enough net code to play with, and a possibility they could do something nice again (though that many billion for a few developers is a bit much).

*I am sure Destiny counts for something and those look like some impressive numbers but at the same time I don't see it discussed around here, don't see it littering second hand game shop shelves, have never heard any of the kids really talk about it the same way as many other things, have not seen much in the way of speedrun or tournament setups.

Curious to see what they will do with them.

If they want to strike back seriously they should probably try to get Take Two.

Take Two seem to be around 16 billion right now market cap ( https://ycharts.com/companies/TTWO/enterprise_value ). Sony are around 138 billion market cap ( https://companiesmarketcap.com/sony/marketcap/ ), and I am not sure what they would have liquid even ignoring this acquisition but https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SONY/sony/cash-on-hand reckons around 16 billion as of September last year (rather a lot less than it was in years prior). Even if the exchange was not going to be above market rates (most of the time you do see a premium of a notable percentage when we are talking about billions) that would be the entire company's walking around money, though I am sure they could get a loan and do stock swaps to offset a bit of that.

 

[brunocar]

This sucks no matter how you look at it

 

[YoureALoser]

My take on this is that it's actually kind of a good thing seeing as how sony's lacking when it comes to multiplayer first person shooters in their exclusive library, so having Bungie revive Killzone or Resistance would be super based, and a nice response to Microsoft taking COD from them.
But jesus fuck man, the irony is extremely powerful with this one. They're like little kids, taking toys from each other lmaooo

Microsoft didn't take COD from Sony. The Activision/Sony deal is still valid, Sony consoles will still be getting timed exclusive content.

 

[linkchidori]

nintendo doesn't give a shit about aquiring studios they know all they need to do is keep making the same mario games over and over and the nintenSHEEP will line up in droves to buy them

Of course, because all the 100 million Switch users are Nintendrones. Anyways, while they make good games i dont see what the problem is exactly.

 

[Deleted member 397813]

im just waiting for nintendo to come in and just buy a small time company

 

[FAST6191]

This sucks no matter how you look at it

Sony, a company I have no fondness for (they have gone above and beyond to mess with hacking setups), buys a bunch of has beens and in doing so dodges them potentially acquiring someone else.
No great loss either way from where I sit.

im just waiting for nintendo to come in and just buy a small time company

Does Nintendo have a habit of buying in small time companies out of the blue these days? Everything I can think of in recent times was someone they have worked with for years already, or hardware/development software to dodge patent and licensing fees.

Looking around they have stakes in a few companies -- maybe they finally buy HAL Laboratory, or Grezzo.

Mind you them doing something radical like buying EA would be a nice twist in all this acquisitions lark.

 

[Obveron]

Microsoft wouldn't be interested in acquiring the other massive North American publishers like EA, Ubisoft, or Take Two/Rockstar since they already have very good partnerships with them.

The big difference I see between the Sony and Microsoft acquisitions (other than cost) is Microsoft will not make major titles platform exclusive, they are interested in software sales and gamepass subscriptions. There is zero chance they would, for example remove future COD games from PlayStation.

Sony on the other hand, will remove Destiny from Xbox as soon as they legally can.

 

[raxadian]

This is getting hilarious.

 

[Jayro]

Gotta admit... I did not see that one coming.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Does this seem strange to anyone? Sony bought a company whose main series is on Xbox consoles. By Microsoft.

 

[ZeroFX]

Snatched while they could lmaooo.

 

[CMDreamer]

There we go, I see it coming... a remaster of all the remasters of Halo for a PS4 and PS5 consoles... just what we needed...

 

[chrisrlink]

antitrust lawsuit for both MS and sony incoming in 3...2...1

 

[Stone_Wings]

Compared to Microsoft's purchase of Activision, this is just a slight poke. lol

That is certainly a subjective statement if I ever saw one.

 

[sloppycrap]

Lol waiting for the deck-building squad-based FPS NFT-fest Pathways Into Darkness reboot

 

[Maq47]

Me initially: Omg Sony bought Halo?!??!

Me realizing Bungie gave Halo away years ago and haven't done much since: oh, neat I guess.



Feels like Sony is a jealous ex and started dating Microsoft's ex to get back at Microsoft for getting a hot new wife

Soooo.... Sony is dating himself, and is bisexual?
...
...
...
What? You never said MS had more than 1 ex (nor did you explicitly state that MS's ex and Sony were different people), and if they did, that would be plain wrong, since the 'hot new wife' clearly does not know about MS's exes (unless she's a hooker, but that would be even more wrong, since the point of being a hooker is to NOT get married).

(I see so many things wrong with this statement. lol)

 

[VartioArtel]

There we go, I see it coming... a remaster of all the remasters of Halo for a PS4 and PS5 consoles... just what we needed...

Pretty sure Bungie signed away the rights to the Halo Franchise to 343 back when the two groups split.