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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

#211

Post by steveklabnik »

jl6 wrote: post #192
bsimpson wrote: post #19

I still remember when Bungie was one of the only companies that made games for Macs. The Marathon trilogy was a memorable part of my childhood. Then Microsoft bought them for Halo, and spun them back out (sans Halo). Halo was first demoed by Steve Jobs - it was going to be a Mac game.

Marathon felt like such a huge deal at the time, with its funky triangular prism box, its hyperliterate storyline, and its novel network multiplayer modes. And yet it seems to get little to no airtime in video game nostalgia mythology. Maybe it was just too niche as a Mac game.

That's exactly it, imho: not enough people got to experience how amazing the trilogy was due to platform exclusivity.

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

#212

Post by grogenaut »

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 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 situation. The folks I interacted with from Sony were all great and very much on our team. One of our producers (who manage multiple games) showed up and ran the localization team when the specialist quit for 2 months.

I think sony will play the right level of support for Bungie.

I also got a shot of what it looked like to develop a game. There are long windows where you have a lot of folks on staff with not much revenue. And developing a new IP means you have a lot more staff that has no revenue. This is hard for single IP studios, and thus the layoffs on a cycle. For 2 IP studios this can be harder as you want to go as big on the 2nd IP as you do the first, so you may have even more.

Being a part of a massive publisher helps out a ton. There are other games coming out and creating income, this levels out the 3-5 year development cycle between IP. It also takes the stress off of the founders a bit. You're not forcasting out runway for 4 years of minimal revenue and hoping you don't have to take on cash at the end and give up ownership.

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

#213

Post by steveklabnik »

spaceisballer wrote: post #195
habeebtc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I grabbed Destiny 2 and some expansions a while back on a humble bundle. I had a blast, it was fun and could play with friends. Then end game seemed to not have much going for it. And it was confusing on what you could and couldn’t access. Came back to it after a break and with more expansions out it just seemed even more confusing on what I could and couldn’t access. It’s sort of the WOW problem, the game is just ov…

I've got 2500 hours in the last two years, and yes, this is one of the biggest issues with the game. You really need a group of friends to walk you through it all. I've been doing so with some folks, and it's a ton of fun, but if you're solo, the experience is far worse.

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

#214

Post by Jensson »

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

AAA is more of an investment term, how much money and how reliably is this project expected to return? Pokémon very reliably produces a ton of sales and revenue, so is AAA even if their development budget/quality doesn't look AAA at all. Normally you need a high budget to ship games that will reliably sell, but Pokémon managed to get there via branding instead.

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

#215

Post by Macha »

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…

Is the associated content free to play? I thought it was tied to the seaason pass. In which case the 30th anniversary content is stuff that would have been in the season pass anyway in prior expansions, and that double dipping is worse for consumers than previous. If it just requires owning the game or just beyond light, that is an improvement to be fair.

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

#216

Post by ouid »

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…

Additionally, most of the arguments about AB dying in the near future have little to do wiht the thing that MS actually bought, which is IP, and everything to do with how AB as a company has handled that IP. If you think Microsoft is better at not mis-handling IP than Activision-Blizzard is, then you should assume that the acquisition of that intellectual property at the market price of the company (which as you mention was not a highly speculative thing), is a very good deal for Microsoft.

That said, I've never played the Microsoft version of Minecraft because it seems strictly worse, and also unmoddable.

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

#217

Post by whalesalad »

bsimpson wrote: post #19

I still remember when Bungie was one of the only companies that made games for Macs. The Marathon trilogy was a memorable part of my childhood. Then Microsoft bought them for Halo, and spun them back out (sans Halo). Halo was first demoed by Steve Jobs - it was going to be a Mac game.

My first computer as a kid (the Family computer) was a Macintosh Quadra 610 complete with a US Robotics dial-up modem. I'm pretty sure we got it at Circuit City for like 4 or 5 grand, something totally obscene. I remember trying to visit the Lego website and could never get much more than a single image to load. Crazy to look back on the specs now and see that it had a clockspeed of 25 MHz.

I remember the first time I saw the Marathon Infinity box. I was so stoked to play! But, alas, it never booted completely. The boot splash would come up and then it would hang. My first dose of digital disappointment!

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

#218

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

sk0g wrote: post #207
klohto wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think AAA is more about budget.

I thought the budget for AAA games was higher, and I thought the budget for Pokemon (handheld games) would be lower.

But turns out Pokemon Sword and Shield cost >$20M to make, and AAA is low 10s of millions. Definitely AAA by every measure.

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

#219

Post by steveklabnik »

Macha wrote: post #215
camel_Snake wrote: post #188

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... 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…

Is the associated content free to play? I thought it was tied to the seaason pass. In which case the 30th anniversary content is stuff that would have been in the season pass anyway in prior expansions, and that double dipping is worse for consumers than previous. If it just requires owning the game or just beyond light, that is an improvement to be fair.

Free to play:

1. dares of eternity

2. Xûr bounties and rewards

3. 11 weapons

Pay $25:

1. forerunner (exotic sidearm)

2. grasp of avarice (dungeon)

3. ship / sparrow

4. four emotes

5. two full sets of universal ornaments

6. one extra helmet ornament

7. Gjallerhorn

All cosmetics except for Forerunner (which has already dropped to #71 in Trials and has no pve relevance) and the Dungeon, which is the one most people were up in arms about.

EDIT: oh, and edited above: I forgot about Gjallerhorn, haha. It requires the dungeon and so therefore is for pay too. It's very good but still not clearly meta, we'll see if rockets are great next season like many people suspect.

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

#220

Post by Jensson »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #218
sk0g wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think AAA is more about budget. I thought the budget for AAA games was higher, and I thought the budget for Pokemon (handheld games) would be lower. But turns out Pokemon Sword and Shield cost >$20M to make, and AAA is low 10s of millions. Definitely AAA by every measure.

I don't think many would say that $20M would be AAA today, games are much bigger and more expensive today than 20 years ago. $20M budget means you would break even on less than a million sales, I doubt anyone would call that level of budget AAA.

Pokémon does however have an AAA level marketing budget even if it doesn't have AAA level development budget.

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