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

Post by spelunker » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

throwaway17_17 wrote: post #67

erulabs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that metric a lot - dollars per entertainment-hour. It's an interesting metric - but it's also important to remember the 1.5 hour Marvel film almost certainly took more human hours in the input side than virtually any video game. At least, my 10k hours in StarCraft took far far far fewer human hours to produce than my 1.5 hours watching the Avengers. Sort of a "labor theory of value" for entertainment pricing,…

I would really like to see that comparison, i.e. the ‘human hours’ required, for a AAA game by a largish developer vs. the average Marvel film. I may try to do some rough numbers later because that just seems like an interesting thing to know. Also, how far down the stack do you go for each. Both rely on tools to make the production happen. Do you count hours to make the digital editing software and fx programs for f…

Post by HWR_14 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 8:06 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #50

brokencode wrote: post #39

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 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 i…

Post by HWR_14 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 8:09 PM UTC

zppln wrote: post #64

willidiots wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm, surely it must have been later than 2007 that they split? Wasn't Reach made by Bungie?

Post by Fuzzwah » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 8:11 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #88

015a wrote: post #77

Outside looking in, this feels like a far more valuable acquisition than Activision for $69B. Call of Duty is valuable, but Microsoft has already said they don't intend to remove it from PlayStation. That could change, but so could CoD's importance to the video gaming industry as a whole: its popularity has dropped with essentially every release since BLOPS2. Outside of CoD: AB is a shadow of its former self; IMO the…

Microsoft didn't buy Halo. They bought Bungie, then used them to make Halo. They spin them off, keeping then Halo franchise. Okay, technically Bungie was working on a RTS game called Halo when MS bought them, but it was after the purchase it shifted genres and found its groove. In other words, this "echo" isn't really what you are saying.

Post by bladegash » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

tapoxi wrote: post #74

bladegash wrote: post #24

Interesting! I wonder how this bodes for Bungie's relatively recent cross-play and cross-save functionality in Destiny 2 (or future games). They executed on it extremely well and it has been great to play on PS4 and Steam without any huge issues.

They claim no changes and they intend to remain a cross-platform studio. So I wonder if this ties into Sony's upcoming PS Now replacement gaming subscription service, you get Destiny content while your PS sub is active.