Sony will purchase Bungie

BrawlMan

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So here's a take I haven't seen anyone address: How is Sony going to handle Bungie's whole "vaulting" (i.e. "we'll take away content that people paid for in order to make it more 'rare and valuable'") policy?
Exactly why I'm not that excited nor thrilled about the buyout. Sony, if you really care, start knuckling down.
 

Chimpzy

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For some reason I read the thread title as "Sony will purge Bungie". Sounds brutal. Perchance also prophetic

Also fun fact: the total value of the game industry M&As this january was apparently greater than the entirety of last year.
 
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Drathnoxis

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What is even going on? What's next, Nintendo is going to buy Capcom?

Also, lol, Bungie is worth less than the makers of Candy Crush.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Porting PS3 games is hard because the cell processor architecture sucked, so it's really not "a push of a button."

Still I would like to replay the Resistance games on a modern system. Not Killzone though, Killzone was always rather mediocre.

Same could be said for Resistance, although I also liked that series (3 played the best by far). The weapons were the best part of that series, while Killzone was more atmospheric and had greater attention to detail. Plus Warzone was some of the most intense MP of that era.
 
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BrawlMan

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What is even going on? What's next, Nintendo is going to buy Capcom?
Yeah, that's not happening. There are people that want Nintendo to buy Sega for Christ's sake! I say no to that too. Those same people seem to forget, that Nintendo still has many IPs they don't bother with anymore and just leave in the vault for no reason, or because they want to "innovate" it to make sure it sells. Which is dumb as always. At least Sega bothers to bring back some of this older IPs.
 

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Can't say I care too much about this. It'd probably be funny if they owned Halo, but they don't and the brand is a far cry from what it used to be. They've been on Destiny for close to a decade and haven't made much else. Bungie has also bled some of its prominent staff members.

The Bungie IPs left don't really mean much nowadays. Do any younger gamers know of Myth, Marathon and Oni? Bungie is basically nothing but Destiny.

It's also kinda whacky that they fought to break away from big publishers, but are allowing themselves to get bought again.
 
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meiam

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Good for the employee, but its crazy how much Sony is overpaying for this, they have one IP that's only sorta popular and there's really no guarantee that they'll even be able to make some other big IP.

Honestly the only move that would have been similar level of impressive would be buying square enix, anything else just reek of desperation and they might as well have used the money to buy a bunch of small indie dev and get them to do some mid size budget game.
 

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Im sure it is just a coincidence, or at most a reaction from last-year's Bethesda acquisition.

Acquisitions like this take ages to negotiate.

I would be very surprised if it took Sony less than 2 weeks after hearing the Activision news, to buy out a whole new studio.
A very fair point. Negotiations take time. The scenario in my head of some Sony executive going "Oh shoot! The value of our stock is dropping quickly, we need to do *SOMETHING* to make it go up! Buy a studio, I don't care about the cost!" is probably merely a ridiculous fantasy. The best I can offer is that if they were already in the talks for closing this deal then the purchase of Activision-Blizzard might've sped up this deal or given Bungie a stronger negotiating position, and therefore a greater degree of freedom in the contract or a higher price point.

Also to note, Sony paid $3.5B for Bungie alone, whereas Microsoft paid $7.5B for all of Bethesda's studios. Bungie must have negotiated the crap out of that acquisition.
(from another thread, but it is about this deal, so I considered it fair to bring up here)
I remember when Destiny came out. The game by the legendary Halo developer, the game series that arguably is the reason Xbox as a brand still exists today. I remember then hype was high of what they would release, and it was released to a resounding "...well that was okay, I suppose". After that I stopped paying attention, since I don't care about shooters.

While I was not paying attention, Destiny continued to operate with a steadily growing pool of players. One year after release it had 25 million registered players. A pool of players big enough to justify making four major expansions for. And I don't think the game ever went free to play, so all those 25 million players represent someone that gave money to Bungie. No wonder EA made Bioware develop Anthem.

I only found out Destiny's level of success through this article(that I cannot add as a clickable link to for some reason: https://www.svampriket.se/2017/08/forhoppningar-och-farhagor-destiny-2/) , where the author wrote the above two paragraphs with more eloquence and detail(in Swedish).

The picture I've gotten is that successful MMOs play in a whole other league from successful single-player games; something I once heard was that Final Fantasy XI made more money cumulatively than the other PS1/PS2 Final Fantasys combined, so with buying Bungie Sony is paying for a company that has managed to release two successful MMO games. Meanwhile, Bethesda's effort in the online space has been the unsuccessful The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76. With this in mind, I don't think the price tag on Bungie contra Bethesda is that odd.

I realize I've pulled a lot of this post from nowhere, and I've already once in this thread put out a speculation that made little sense so I fully acknowledge I can be completely wrong with this post in its entirety. I just wanted to put out that:

1. Destiny IS big.
2. Multiplayer is different from singleplayer.
 
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Hawki

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Not Killzone though, Killzone was always rather mediocre.
:(

I think they bought Bungie due to their brand name being famous. Destiny did rather well in large part due to Bungie’s name attached to the project. I suspect Sony is banking on their next game selling well due to how marketable the Bungie name is.
I can buy Destiny being a famous IP, not so much Bungie. Only two of its IPs have really approached mass popularity status, and one of them is now owned by Microsoft.

343 is already doing that for them.
Um after Infinite? Not sure how, exactly. And Halo's still a much bigger IP than Destiny.

The Bungie IPs left don't really mean much nowadays. Do any younger gamers know of Myth, Marathon and Oni?
Probably not. Heck, Bungie doesn't even own Myth anymore, but Take-Two does.

I'd personally love to see Marathon remade, and Myth ported to GOG or something, but alas...

It's also kinda whacky that they fought to break away from big publishers, but are allowing themselves to get bought again.
"This is not your grave. But you are welcome in it."
 

Hawki

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Sony, stop being stupid.
Not sure how that's stupid. Never played Destiny itself, but it's got a pretty detailed setting that could easily support EU material (frankly, it's struck me as a little weird that there isn't more of it). So from simply an IP standpoint, a TV show makes sense. And if Destiny is Sony's answer to Halo, then it makes even more sense considering the breadth of Halo's EU material that already includes two miniseries and an upcoming TV series.
 

BrawlMan

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Not sure how that's stupid. Never played Destiny itself, but it's got a pretty detailed setting that could easily support EU material (frankly, it's struck me as a little weird that there isn't more of it). So from simply an IP standpoint, a TV show makes sense. And if Destiny is Sony's answer to Halo, then it makes even more sense considering the breadth of Halo's EU material that already includes two miniseries and an upcoming TV series.
No, what's stupid is Sony obsession with turning every single IP of theirs in to movies. So far their track record sucks. How about focusing on what you're good and wait a while. Or they're adapting games that don't need adaptions.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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No, what's stupid is Sony obsession with turning every single IP of theirs in to movies. So far their track record sucks. How about focusing on what you're good and wait a while. Or they're adapting games that don't need adaptions.
Sony Pictures + Sony Interactive Entertainment is their overarching plan. Make game IPs with a strong focus on storytelling, and expand upon that with film adaptions. I’m game if it’s done well. There is a thin line between that and phoned-in cash-in’s, but they should know better than to fall into that trap.