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

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

#131

Post by tsimionescu »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #68
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,…

If you allocate all those hours to one gamer, there's no contest. Check out the dev costs of games here [1] to the "net negative" (no marketing) costs for movies here [2] -- 4 games break $100M while you need $200M as a movie to get on the list. So, twice as much for 2h of content! But if you factor in audience size, things get more complicated. Red Dead 2 sold about 38M copies, a near record, but Avengers Endgame re…

Isn't a huge part of that money going to the actors, not into more typical actual labor?

Games take a lot longer to produce than films (in total, per hour of content that may not be true).

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

#132

Post by steveklabnik »

015a wrote: post #126
HWR_14 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First of all; the original acquisition is not what I was referring to, but rather: Microsoft's "maintenance" of the Halo IP after Bungie itself left Microsoft's domain, and the formation of a near-entirely new studio (343) to develop it. Ok, they didn't buy the IP at that juncture; they bought a studio to develop an IP they already owned. Use some creativity and you can see the parallels are similar enough. Second: D…

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo:_Combat_Evolved#Prototype...

The earliest versions were basically built on top of Myth's engine, Bungie's RTS. It then eventually became a third person shooter, and it was such at the MacWorld announcement. It did turn into an FPS after the Microsoft acquisition.

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

#133

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

Why are so many people trying to make triple A games? It just seems like there is too much supply and not enough demand. Don't even most hardcore gamers only play a select few triple A games? And aren't triple A games unpopular with almost all casual and sports gamers?

And most importantly - isn't there the LEAST growth in the hardcore gaming segment?

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

#134

Post by spelunker »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #123
spelunker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you count the hours to design and produce the computer hardware used to render the CGI for a film? Do you count the years and cost of raising a child from birth to being a member of the crew? I doubt they count hours towards tools etc developed as they probably paid money for those. So, different bucket I guess, and still important for the overall cost.

Paying money for a tool means having a person develop that tool for you.

Obviously yes, but if you're attempting to add up person hours worked for some project, I don't think you would include the hours spent in say Mac OS.

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

#135

Post by Brave-Steak »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #133
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…

Why are so many people trying to make triple A games? It just seems like there is too much supply and not enough demand. Don't even most hardcore gamers only play a select few triple A games? And aren't triple A games unpopular with almost all casual and sports gamers? And most importantly - isn't there the LEAST growth in the hardcore gaming segment?

No post body was provided.

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

#136

Post by EA »

mig39 wrote: post #125
w4rh4wk5 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it was initially supposed to be an RTS, just a bit longer before Microsoft stepped in.

Did you watch the video? It was basically complete before Microsoft bought it. They then ported it to Xbox. It may have been an RTS initially, but when Microsoft bought Bungie, it was already "Combat Evolved" and near release.

HALO was originally based on Myth. That is when Halo was briefly (conceptually) an RTS. It evolved into a Third Person Shooter, and finally First Person Shooter. After Bungie was acquired by Microsoft, they had a year to make their game, so they made the decision to start over from the beginning and create Halo as a first person shooter.

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

#137

Post by MangoCoffee »

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…

>In comparison: Sony paid 20x less for Bungie. What they lack in variety of products, they make up for in, in my view, Potential. Destiny is a great franchise

Strongly disagree. Bungie have one IP. while AB have many well know IPs. Blizzard proven, you can make a new game out of old IP. Warcraft is used to make Hearthstone the card game.

you are comparing one franchise IP to multiple franchise IPs and claiming Bungie is a better deal. that just stretching it.

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

#138

Post by w4rh4wk5 »

mig39 wrote: post #125
w4rh4wk5 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it was initially supposed to be an RTS, just a bit longer before Microsoft stepped in.

Did you watch the video? It was basically complete before Microsoft bought it. They then ported it to Xbox. It may have been an RTS initially, but when Microsoft bought Bungie, it was already "Combat Evolved" and near release.

Believe me, I don't need to watch that video. I've been there ;)

A lot of development happened right before Combat Evolved got released due to Microsoft injecting a lot of money. It wasn't just an Xbox port of an already finished game. Look at the E3 2000 trailer which is pretty much what has been shown at Macworld the year before. Combat Evolved looked quite different when it came out a year later. Note that Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000.

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

#139

Post by slugiscool99 »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #123
spelunker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you count the hours to design and produce the computer hardware used to render the CGI for a film? Do you count the years and cost of raising a child from birth to being a member of the crew? I doubt they count hours towards tools etc developed as they probably paid money for those. So, different bucket I guess, and still important for the overall cost.

Paying money for a tool means having a person develop that tool for you.

Sure, but game devs use tools like unreal engine the development time of which shouldn't be factored into the human hours calculation

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

#140

Post by mig39 »

EA wrote: post #136
mig39 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you watch the video? It was basically complete before Microsoft bought it. They then ported it to Xbox. It may have been an RTS initially, but when Microsoft bought Bungie, it was already "Combat Evolved" and near release.

HALO was originally based on Myth. That is when Halo was briefly (conceptually) an RTS. It evolved into a Third Person Shooter, and finally First Person Shooter. After Bungie was acquired by Microsoft, they had a year to make their game, so they made the decision to start over from the beginning and create Halo as a first person shooter.

Honestly, that would have been awesome!

I loved Myth and Myth II. A space-based one would have been great.

I don't understand the timeline, though, as the videos shown at MacWorld in 1999 (before Microsoft), show Halo as a first-person shooter. The video is linked above. I think it was a FPS long before Microsoft was interested. I think Microsoft bought it specifically because of the FPS game.

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