Clearly Microsoft making divestitures to get under the antitrust hurdle.
Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
41–50 of 263 posts
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#42Capcom? Konami? Sega? Nah, let's buy this 1 old ass game. Hope Bungie has something in the works that is 3.6B
Does Bungie even still own the rights to their older catalog (not counting Halo obviously)? Like Myth, Oni, and Marathon?
I don't think they do. I think Oni is with Take-Two. I searched about that one a while back actually as I always loved Oni and wanted to see it come back.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait wasn't Bungie a MS division at one point?
Yes. Bungie was an independent studio back in the 90's, then MS acquired them for Halo. Bungie split from MS in 2007; the Halo IP remained behind under 343. They were under Activision during the Destiny era until 2019. So if they stayed, they would've ended up back at MS. The M&A merry-go-round continues.
They weren't under Activision, they just had a publishing agreement with Activision in the 2010s, and retained all intellectual property.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#44Another 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 did go down after acquisition, but what others are you talking about? Their biggest (Zenimax) one will start releasing new Xbox and PC exclusive games from this year onwards, so it's still early to call that one a failure. Mojang, is doing Mojang thing i.e. Minecraft and while they haven't had a great success after that, they're still doing fine. Playground games is doing Forza which is actually pretty popular a…
And frankly, Rare was a shadow of it's former self at acquisition anyway. There were still some a couple of the people left who worked on the games that made Rare famous (e.g. Ken Lobb, Grant Kirkhope), but it had a huge amount of brain drain around the early 2000s that left it in a state to be one of the first game dev studios to be picked up on the cheap by Microsoft. Nintendo want interested in supporting it, and it probably just would have went under if not for Microsoft.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#45Let’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 a…
Isn't this the third time? I thought they were owned by Activision for a bit, before leaving again.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#46Let’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 a…
Isn't this the third time? I thought they were owned by Activision for a bit, before leaving again.
Publishing agreement, not ownership.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#47Hopefully someone at Sony really liked Marathon.
Or Oni.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#48Let’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 a…
Isn't this the third time? I thought they were owned by Activision for a bit, before leaving again.
They partnered with Activision to leverage them for distribution in a ten year deal that they broke part way through, iirc.
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#49Who's left (as large distinct publishers/studios)? - Sony - Microsoft - Electronic Arts - Capcom - Ubisoft - Nintendo - Konami - Square Enix - Tencent - Take Two - Warner Brother Games - Embracer Group IP license biz model (Disney, Sega, etc...) I'd include Valve, but they just don't make games anymore edit: Added Embracer
Half-Life: Alyx was made recently no?
Re: Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
#50Let’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 a…
> I guess that points to how unbelievable hard it is for independent game developers to survive
I thought companies like Bungie, Bioware, etc. sold out.
i.e. it's easy to survive if you make blockbuster titles like Halo or Mass Effect, but then a big corp comes by and offers mega bucks to buy you and so you sell out. The solution if you don't want to be "under the thumb of [a] corporate overlord" is to not sell out in the first place.