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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

#151

Post by rodgerd »

HWR_14 wrote: post #92
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…

Bungir became a household name while MS owned them and they launched an iconic franchise. How was that bad?

Prior to their Microsoft deal they produced a variety of games with different settings (the Marathon universe which linked to their earlier games and forward to Halo, Myth I/II which were RTS with rich lore, and Oni which was a close-combat game that functioned as a precursor to the likes of Yakuza and Sleeping Dogs in terms of the mechanics).

With Halo, the single-player and lore began to tail off to focus on the multi-player market, and their other settings and styles of games were all discarded in favour of an FPS treadmill.

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

#153

Post by abakker »

parkingrift wrote: post #70
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 think the word "find" is pretty descriptive. It's hard to find people willing to turn down billions of dollars. This is more like an indictment on M&A in the modern economy. Why compete when you can simply acquire?

Acquiring is good! Not every company that wants to grow needs to do something original, sometimes funding people doing original things is good. Bad management is not a requirement for acquiring companies, though it is frustratingly common.

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

#154

Post by password321 »

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?

There is an extreme demand. Many franchises like Pokemon are still breaking sales records along with consoles.

https://gamerant.com/pokemon-legends-arceus-sales-records/

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

#155

Post by rodgerd »

pjerem wrote: post #119
manojlds wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has said that they don't see Sony and Nintendo as competition and the acquisitions are not about Sony. (but about Google, Amazon, Apple etc) Phil Spencer also said he hopes Sony and Nintendo will preserve the gaming ecosystem unlike those others.

> Microsoft has said that they don't see Sony and Nintendo as competition They all say this and … that’s just marketing/bs. How in the world aren’t they competing ? They are all battling for a limited ressource which is your video game budget.

In the case of Nintendo, they've agreed to support cross-play, which Sony refuse to. And their consoles and brand are very different from XBox. Very few people are buying a Switch instead of an XBox or gaming PC; they're more likely to be buying it as another way of gaming.

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

#157

Post by willis936 »

habeebtc wrote: post #149
sylens wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, with lots of fans. The team brings rock solid FPS dev & netcode experience (something Sony's first party studios are at a deficit for). I disagree. Destiny may have once had potential, but Bungie is a studio that continually shoots itself in the foot. Just li…

To actually finish all the content in each D2 expansion you have to invest full time job kind of time in it. Destiny doesn't just feel like a job, in some sense it IS a job. I thought they did a good job rehabilitating the first game from the sorry shape it shipped in (see: the economics of the loot cave). It is a mountain which can be climbed, and it is fun to do so. (There is also a literal mountain to climb)

The child in me always kneejerk reacts "not my Bungie!". How much of the Destiny trainwreck was publisher fingering? Could the Bungie of 10 years ago have put out a game that is fun, like they had consistently for the previous decade? Of course, it was just those pesky publishers.

Well, now the Bungie of yore is thoroughly dead. All of the faces from the Halo Vid Docs have moved on. What's left is a husk. Sony bought a hope. They also prevented Microsoft and Bungie from teaming up again. Perhaps they fear that duo. I wish them the best.

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

#158

Post by moogleii »

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…

I think Microsoft's play was to further strengthen Game Pass to the point that Sony can't deny it on their platform anymore (or at least make it hurt more to continue doing so). It makes sense that MS won't remove games from Sony's access, but it does give them more levers to play with. "Hey this game is 'free' on Game Pass (PC + XBox). You can still buy it for PlayStation, though."

And Sony's move is simply a defense against that.

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

#159

Post by mig39 »

InitialLastName wrote: post #144
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.

I watched the video. The game in that trailer could just as easily have been a tactical RTS with a cinematic camera as a FPS (note the complete absence of first-person shots).

Right! For sure.

But according to https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwqjg3/the-complete-untold-h...

It was already an FPS by 1998, 2 years before Microsoft was involved, and a year before the video shown above.

They started as an RTS, then decided it was way too much fun to actually drive the vehicles, and the rest is history.

Microsoft definitely helped with the development, but Microsoft bought a FPS game, not an RTS one.

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