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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

#201

Post by er4hn »

rodgerd wrote: post #145
er4hn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Halo was an FPS and a spiritual successor to an earlier series of theirs called "Marathon". The main characters, weapons, and themes of the original game all skew very closely to Marathon.

I miss the Bungie that pumped out Marathon, Myth, and Oni. (I will look forward to people who were screaming that console makers mustn't be allowed to buy game authors and studios seamlessly turn a 180 if it favours their tribe.)

Oni I can pass on ;)

Myth and Marathon were experiences in storytelling for me however. I even have a copy of the GURPS Myth roleplaying guide sitting on my bookshelf behind me that goes more into the lore of the Myth universe.

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

#202

Post by baud147258 »

Xplune13 wrote: post #18
ngngngng wrote: post #6

Another 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…

> Obsidian haven't started to make Xbox and PC exclusives yet, but they'll also start with that presumably next year.

Didn't they released Grounded, exclusive to PC and xbox in 2020? Though since it's a survival game, people might not remember it's been developed by them.

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

#203

Post by sk0g »

scarface74 wrote: post #169
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…

You’re forgetting about how profitable (and disgusting) Activision’s mobile play to win games are. Besides, MS needs content for its subscription gaming service. It’s not like consoles themselves are profitable. They are just a means to deliver games to users.

Not sure what's wrong with games being "pay to win", isn't that the point of them? Unless you meant pay to win, or the newer and weirder version, play to earn.

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

#204

Post by grogenaut »

moogleii wrote: post #158
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 defens…

I have PC Game Pass ultimate. The only thing I've used it for is Halo. The games that I got for "free" on it I actually bought elsewhere and added up to less than I spent on ultimate, even new games like DeathLoop. I've spent about 80 on the games I could play from game pass, it's like $180/year (I paid less through friends at MS). Took me a 2 months to finish death loop, cost me $30 on steam sale, that's break even. They've crippled several indy games, for instance astroneer, to only play on supported premium servers, that cost my friend (with gamepass) $30 that he could have just purchased astroneer on (and just run server locally or a linode).

So far while game pass seems cool it's not really panning out monetarily for me.

Other than these big studios that MS built, the rest of the game pass catalog would be easy for sony to pick up on their own game pass.

I'll also note that no one seems to be talking about nintendo, who also has a great stable of titles, needs to take on game pass. Sony and Nintendo's exclusive catalogs are in the same ballpark (if very different).

Microsoft also loses out on the console money, since why would I buy a console when I have this gaming pc that's much better? So makes sense for me to just buy the PC games and a PS5, that and my switch has me covered.

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

#205

Post by Godel_unicode »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #174
mdasen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly, I'm not sure if Activision's IP catalog would attract and retain high-value talent in the same way that Disney's does. Yes, the catalogue is deep, but much of it consists of dead horses that have been beaten for years or once-great icons that were mismanaged into relative irrelevance. Budget constraints didn't seem to be what was holding them back before, and I can't see Microsoft suddenly managing the IP a…

I'm honestly really excited about Microsoft using their proven history of remastering games (Halo, AoE) and applying it to that exact list of once-great icons. At this point all they need to do to gain a ton of goodwill is roll WoW into gamepass so it's not yet another subscription and fix the Warcraft remaster.

Those along with not clogging up the candy crush money printer will get them plenty of runway to really dig in and fix the culture.

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

#206

Post by steveklabnik »

camel_Snake wrote: post #188
Macha wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A truism about Destiny: there's always people, both people who play the game and who don't, talking tons of trash about it.

Personally I've gotten far more value than I've paid for out of everything I've ever bought in Destiny, including the 30th pack. I've even bought a few expansions twice. That said we are lucky enough to be in tech. And there were a lot of people complaining about the 30th pack before it launched, though those seem to have quieted down by now.

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

#207

Post by sk0g »

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

Not sure what definition you are using to exclude Pokemon, but Wikipedia's [0] definition certainly would classify it as AAA [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher#Major_pub...

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

#209

Post by steveklabnik »

sylens wrote: post #198
samsgro wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally agree, but on the other hand, the game feels a LOT better since since the Activision divestment. In the last 12 months narrative team of Destiny 2 have REALLY knocked it out of the park, with the seasonal plot actually making sense and having some interesting activities (like Battlegrounds). Some significant improvements in QoL too. While there definitely gaps as you say - the New Light experience in partic…

I agree that the seasonal storytelling is better but they have a very real problem with the game becoming Bounty Collector. They also have basically abandoned Crucible, which makes me think the new IP is where all their top PvP talent is currently.

It has been rough out there for the crucible but improvements are coming: https://twitter.com/joegoroth/status/1422951524649500678

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

#210

Post by sk0g »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #106
dogma1138 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Halo 1-3, ODST and Reach what exactly went wrong for Bungie when they were under Microsoft? Microsoft, Activision, Sony they were never truly independent no studio these days can afford too. Game development is a mess and a very expensive mess at that, you need a sugar daddy if you would to survive.

> Halo 1-3, ODST and Reach what exactly went wrong for Bungie when they were under Microsoft? Bungie didn't like how Microsoft managed them. Bungie wanted to do something other than Halo, but Microsoft wanted more Halo. A Destiny reference can be seen in ODST: https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/01/09/h...

Ironically, Bungie broke off from Microsoft in hopes of more creative freedom, but as per the article, are running an even tighter ship now... Unfortunate.
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