Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by whywhywhywhy » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #113

cableshaft wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Halo. Destiny 3 will probably be exclusive to Playstation though.

It's not looking like Destiny 3 is ever going to happen. There was even an interview from March of last year where a director said that they think Destiny 3 would be a mistake. And on top of that, they've laid out Destiny 2's roadmap until roughly 2024, and say that that's not the end then either. We'll see!

>There was even an interview from March of last year where a director said that they think Destiny 3 would be a mistake

Destiny, especially Destiny 2 was really mismanaged by the directors though.

They do have another IP, Matter in the works though.

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

#182

Post by esturk » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

synthos wrote: post #22

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

They both win if players have and keep both subscriptions simultaneously

That's actually not what they care about the most. Yes it's great to have players that will buy both consoles and both subscriptions. The companies don't worry about them as much because they already know it's a guaranteed segment of the market.

What they care about more are players that can ONLY buy one OR the other. That's higher on their priority list. This is about buying the mind shares of tomorrow.

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

#183

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: post #148

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…

It feels the opposite way to me. Microsoft bought a company with an extensive suite of IP that publishes a lot of games. Sony panicked and bought a company that has one franchise (Destiny). When looking at Disney, I see a company that has bought a lot of deep IP catalogues. They've used that to really propel their future and get high-value talent that wants to work in those universes with a Disney-sized budget to tel…

They also get neat tech with the purchase - the blizzard launcher is awesome. As far as smooth downloads/deployments/go-lives are concerned that launcher and the games its services are in leagues of their own, so far beyond Microsofts own store it's not even funny (ignoring the recent problem of Diablo 2 running twenty year old net code causing problems with its recent launch).

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

#184

Post by kbelder » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

klohto wrote: post #179

password321 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Pokemon isn’t AAA

What, there's a AAAA category now?

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

#185

Post by pm90 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

This seems more like something to calm investors rather than interest in taking the IP anywhere. And… I get it, if you’re Sony you gotta show you’re willing to play.

Regardless of what MS has said I suspect people don’t really trust them, especially since the Sony/MS duopoly (Nintendo not really competing in the high end console category) isn’t a smooth one.

MS wants to dominate the market. XBOX game pass is doing ridiculously well. If they can make XBOX the default console and reduce Sony to a niche player they will absolutely do it.

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

#186

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #185

This seems more like something to calm investors rather than interest in taking the IP anywhere. And… I get it, if you’re Sony you gotta show you’re willing to play. Regardless of what MS has said I suspect people don’t really trust them, especially since the Sony/MS duopoly (Nintendo not really competing in the high end console category) isn’t a smooth one. MS wants to dominate the market. XBOX game pass is doing ri…

I think it's hilarious. Microsoft buys the studio behind iconic PS characters (Crash Bandicoot and Spyro), and then a few weeks later, Sony buys the studio that made Halo?!

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

#187

Post by cletus » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

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…

> Call of Duty is valuable, but Microsoft has already said they don't intend to remove it from PlayStation.

They haven't said that. They have said they will honor their existing contracts [1]. That's not permanent guarantee. I'm not saying they'll pull it as soon as they can but it gives them a lot of power.

I'm not sure you realize just how big the CoD franchise is. It pulls in billions of dollars every year by itself.

As for Blizzard, yes the company has seen better days but their IP is still valuable. Diablo 4 whenever it comes out will sell a ton of copies.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/20/22892860/sony-microsoft-a...

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

#188

Post by camel_Snake » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #172

willis936 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They've continued some of their worse monetisation and game design decisions while independent for quite a few years now, and stuff like the poor value of the 30th anniversary pack is entirely their own mistake to make, so I feel publisher meddling was a handy deflection for Bungie to hide behind in many cases.

> They've continued some of their worse monetisation and game design decisions while independent for quite a few years now, and stuff like the poor value of the 30th anniversary pack is entirely their own mistake to make...

This is an interesting thought. The 30th anniversary *paid* content was a bit lighter than anticipated, however the Free To Play content that came alongside it was fantastic. Perhaps I'm just used to seeing phrases like 'worse monetization' from the consumers perspective rather than the business's, but most of the community reactions from the 30th were positive, at least in regards to what was paid and what wasn't.

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

#189

Post by ezekg » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #170

sensitivefrost wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sony panicked and bought a company that has one franchise (Destiny)." If you think Sony turned around and bought Bungie in the 2 weeks since the Acti-Blizz acquisition was announced, I dunno what to tell you.

On the flip side, it's highly unlikely that Sony didn't know talks were ongoing for ActiBlizz, and may even have been offered a chance at the same.

Definitely. Especially considering they had (timed) exclusivity of all COD content for years.

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

#190

Post by toyg » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

erulabs wrote: post #56

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 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,…

> the 1.5 hour Marvel film almost certainly took more human hours in the input side than virtually any video game

I'm not sure what you mean.

A big Marvel movie costs around $300m-$500m to produce, these days. AAA videogames can go over $300m-$400m I believe. It's basically the same ballpark, as far as input costs go. However, a film results in 2h of output enjoyment for a consumer, whereas games get several multiples of that.