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Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

cnbc.com

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Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

#31

Post by evrydayhustling »

supermatt wrote: post #21

Feels like sony + ms are just going to shoot each other in the foot. Gamers will end up with both consoles (sold as loss leaders) to get access to the exclusives and then spread their investment in games between the two. Lose/lose

Recurring online service payments are replacing game sales as the guaranteed loss recouping strategy for consoles. Exclusive titles will rely heavily on the online service, driving long-term subscriptions and anchoring cross-platform DLC purchases.

The loser is game devs, who must either (a) do extra dev AND pay higher fees to integrate deeply with each platform, or (b) integrate minimally with each platform and compete with titles that get a leg-up from users' sunk costs into the network service.

tl;dr - the online service is the new console

Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

#32

Post by SllX »

supermatt wrote: post #21

Feels like sony + ms are just going to shoot each other in the foot. Gamers will end up with both consoles (sold as loss leaders) to get access to the exclusives and then spread their investment in games between the two. Lose/lose

Decent chance I won’t have to change my setup from PC/PS5/Switch for a good long while. When I last looked, whatever we’re calling the Xbox line now doesn’t have enough exclusives to personally justify any amount of investment in the console given my arrangement and that looks unlikely to change anytime in the near future.

Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

#34

Post by [deleted] »

frenchie14 wrote: post #26
ngngngng wrote: post #6

Another one! I'm interested to see how this plays out. Most of Microsoft's acquisitions in recent years have been failures. Studios that had been making iconic games were acquired by Microsoft and in short order were only making shovelware (see Rare post acquisition). Sony doesn't seem to have the same problem. Sucker Punch and Insomniac are good examples of this, their output has been as good as ever since being acq…

Rare was acquired in 2002 and their list of games since doesn't look like shovelware to me [1]. Yeah, there's some misses, but there's also some great games in there. The worst ones are the ones tied to Kinect and MS has abandoned that venture. Also, MS acquisitions from the last 5 years have released standout games: Psychonauts 2 and Forza Horizon 5 are two that I played and loved and are certainly not "shovelware"…

[deleted]

Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

#39

Post by brokencode »

Let’s hope this goes better for Bungie than when Microsoft owned them. It’s kind of funny that they’d get out from under the thumb of one corporate overlord only to find a new corporate overlord 15 years later.

I guess that points to how unbelievably hard it is for independent game developers to survive, and it makes me kind of sad. If it can happen to Bungie or Blizzard, it can happen to any game developer.

Gamers are notoriously hard to part with their money, even though games can deliver an incredible amount of value for each dollar compared to other types of entertainment.

I’ve put hundreds of hours into certain games that I’ve paid $60 or less for, whereas renting or going to a movie provides only a couple hours of entertainment for something like $5-$20.

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