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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

#241

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 worked for a studio that Sony acquired. The transition went well. Sony seems to be a Value Add for the studios it runs. They provide Money, HR, Basic systems, like any big company. They also provide market analysis, insight, and collaboration with the other studios. There's no chance 2 Sony studios are going to put out the same game at the same time, they have a "portfolio". So there won't be a Prototype/Infamous s…

This is a great post and generally echos my own experience. I think Destiny is a decent brand with a smaller, but still sizable following.

My personal opinion: Sony wanted to acquire both the Destiny brand and the team that built that brand—especially the innovative networking engineers. I hope that Bungie gets another shot at a new brand, maybe something that isn't a shooter.

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

#242
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare was acquired in 2002 and their list of games since doesn't look like shovelware to me [1]. Yeah, there's some misses, but there's also some great games in there. The worst ones are the ones tied to Kinect and MS has abandoned that venture. Also, MS acquisitions from the last 5 years have released standout games: Psychonauts 2 and Forza Horizon 5 are two that I played and loved and are certainly not "shovelware"…

Maybe it's not shovelware, but there's a pretty stark difference in the caliber of games that Rare released after their acquisition. This is the company that made Donkey Kong Country, Banjo & Kazooie, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker, etc, so anything short of iconic is a step down. However, I'll add that Viva Piñata is an oft overlooked gem.

That's a pretty reasonable assessment.

Honestly, I wonder how much of this has to do with how much things have changed in the last 25 years. Games have gotten so much more complex and shifted their focus to multiplayer. It feels like it's no longer possible for a single developer to have so much impact. Rare developed multiple iconic games _per year_! Nowadays, developers can barely release one game every few years.

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

#243
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 made a big mistake not just buying bungie after halo reach. The franchise and the studio were both at their very peak at this point. 343 is just not the developer bungie is and fans have been feeling for years that 343 has squandered their position. A lot of players to this day strictly play the bungie era games on master chief collection, and that release took a long time for it to be fixed from its broken state on release

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

#244
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, it was a mac game. It still came out and Halo: Combat Involved ran beautifully on PPC and Intel (Rosetta 1 translation?). Good memories of that game. I still haven’t played marathon :0

Years after the Xbox version. The Mac port came out in Dec. 2003. The Xbox version released in Nov. 2001. It was also published and ported by MacSoft whereas earlier Bungie games like Myth I and II and Marathon were Mac from the beginning.

I’m willing to bet if halo didn’t come to xbox we wouldn’t be discussing it today and still playing halo games 20 years later.

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

#245
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…

The bigger issue is simply that video games aren't made like movies/television. They're very different.

Video games are very distributed. Its the work of a system of people, from high level concept artists building a shared mindspace for how the game should feel, to writers, to gameplay programmers, low level engine developers making the previously impossible possible, and at the bleeding edge sometimes even hardware engineers. All integral to the process.

Very, very rarely a "10x leader" will emerge from the industry. Someone like Chris Metzen of Blizzard, or Martin O'Donnell of Bungie, or John Carmack, Tim Sweeny, Peter Molyneux (for all his flaws lol) or Todd Howard, Miyamoto, or Kojima.

But its nowhere near the level of impact on the final product that a talented director or writer of a movie can bring to the table. Even as recently as the Bobba Fett series, and Tik Tok blowing up about the two episodes Bryce Dallas Howard directed being significantly better than the rest of the series. That just doesn't happen in games. Games don't "bring in" "guest directors" to... produce... one installment? One segment of the overall game? Its just nonsense. Moreover, every great leader I listed above, eventually, produces something kinda shit. Even the stuff they're known for, oftentimes they'd say that they received far more credit than they deserve; that the team deserves far more than they get.

The broader conclusion being: it takes some literal magic to produce great games. Ask anyone in the industry and they'll all agree: its a miracle games ever ship, let alone that some stand among the highest tier of art humanity has ever made. You can't just buy cool IP, like a sugar trap to attract talent like they're flies. On the contrary, the one model which does seem to work, is the literal antithesis of the Disney model: teams which work together for abnormally long periods of time (5+ years) trend toward producing fantastic stuff, eventually.

Though to be clear: there's something about that "Disney of Games" idea that I find fascinating as an explanation for Microsoft's behavior. And while I disagree with the assertion that it will work, I can't disagree with the guess that its a model Xbox has used, internally, to talk about their growing portfolio.

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

#246
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PtW games I've seen use

- social manipulation from fake players to employ peer pressure, membership, and others to extract revenues

- employees masquerading as players to stir up conflict that gets people to pay money to support the "guild war"

- employees masquerading as players that target free or low revenue players to get them to pay to survive/not be harassed.

- have outright gambling with attendant neurologically tuned payouts like slot machines

All told these are "games" in the sense that blackjack and poker and other gambling pursuits that prey on neurological reward systems are "games". Except they lump on social networking manipulation and group dynamics to further revenue extraction.

And they aren't nearly regulated to the degree that casino games are.

The games I've described are Machine Zone and other of their ilk that are the worst offenders, but their revenue has forced practically all vendors of video entertainment to consider using their tactics to "enhance shareholder value".

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

#247
post #148
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…

I think there's a misunderstanding of my comment; I am not asserting that the AB purchase was bad for Microsoft. Just that this Sony/Bungie purchase will be better for Sony than AB will be for Microsoft. Both platforms will see success with their recent acquisitions.

One thing I'd add, in short: Its easier to 10x a small company than a large company. Applied here; Destiny is a fantastic launchpad, but many in the community would agree that its potential was always short of being fully realized. With additional funding, talent, and leadership; its reasonable to conclude that PlayStation could be a very positive force on the game (for everyone who isn't an Xbox gamer, of course, sadly). There's a lot of room to improve this product, which is already relatively good; many untapped players.

In comparison, AB is something of a... well, I don't want to say "disaster", because there are some great parts to that company, but they're having major issues. Even putting the sexual assault scandal aside: There's much less of a launchpad for Xbox to start from and add value. We're talking ten thousand employees, across dozens of product lines, and maybe three of them have a strong future outlook. They're looking at a years-long phase of cleaning shop, reorganizing, firing, hiring, planning new projects, cancelling bad ones, it's going to be dirty, and in none of that is "releasing awesome games to players". But, maybe there's a light at the end; I really, really hope so, and believe there will be.

And all of this is if the acquisition goes through. There's a real possibility it'll be shut down. Sony "sneaking in" this much smaller Bungie acquisition at the same time basically guarantees it'll go through; the USG/EU won't block both. And frankly, I don't believe they'll block either, but its still a possibility.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes they did, but it's still an early access game, so I don't know if it counts a a fully developed release.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

I’d be surprised if they touch the WoW cash cow and make it free with Game Pass. It would be a bold move

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

#250
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…

Did rare go down after acquisition? I'm young so maybe I don't remember what the glory days of rare were but Rare with Microsoft produced Viva Pinata, banjo kazooie nuts and bolts, and sea of thieves. Sea of thieves did have some trouble at launch but it has grown into quite a great game. Viva piñata is highly revered and nuts and bolts is also loved, even if it wasn't a banjo kazooie platformer.
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