Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
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 second most valuable IP suite in the history of gaming (first: Nintendo), but years of failed projects, brain drain, and poor employee culture make acting on that IP difficult. Halo 4, 5, and Infinite have suggested that Xbox can keep dying IP on life support, but reclaiming the glory of Blizzard's past likely isn't in the cards, at least on the medium term.
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).
This spectacularly echos previous acquisitions from both companies. Microsoft buys Halo, Gears, Bethesda, AB; all "glory day IP" acquisitions with demonstrated historical mega-success, but weaker more recent market success. Sony goes smaller; Bluepoint, Housemarque, and Bungie; but despite being smaller names, these companies have far more demonstrable ability to produce triple-A content, tomorrow. In other words; Microsoft is looking for name recognition to sell Game Pass; Sony is looking for talent, which the PlayStation name recognition and marketing machine can wring success out of.
Most recent tactile example: Returnal was a massive success despite being in a very niche genre, which directly led to Housemarque's acquisition. Its hard to imagine it seeing the same success on Xbox, especially since Xbox did have an exclusive, in a different genre, but with rather similar vibes, release around the same time (The Medium). It was, to my eyes, a market failure (but, of course, I have no insider info).
I don't like centralization. But it is interesting to see these two different strategies play out.
Okay, technically Bungie was working on a RTS game called Halo when MS bought them, but it was after the purchase it shifted genres and found its groove.
In other words, this "echo" isn't really what you are saying.
It may have been an RTS initially, but when Microsoft bought Bungie, it was already "Combat Evolved" and near release.
I loved Myth and Myth II. A space-based one would have been great.
I don't understand the timeline, though, as the videos shown at MacWorld in 1999 (before Microsoft), show Halo as a first-person shooter. The video is linked above. I think it was a FPS long before Microsoft was interested. I think Microsoft bought it specifically because of the FPS game.
A lot of development happened right before Combat Evolved got released due to Microsoft injecting a lot of money. It wasn't just an Xbox port of an already finished game. Look at the E3 2000 trailer which is pretty much what has been shown at Macworld the year before. Combat Evolved looked quite different when it came out a year later. Note that Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000.
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.
And with this recent 30th anniversary event, it also seems like they kind of think of all of their various older IPs to be in a multiverse of some sort.
(And Pathways into Darkness was also an FPS, just like those three Marathon games. Bungie has been doing FPSes for a long time, 100% agree with you.)
(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.)
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.
Second: Do you recall the keynote where Bungie unveiled Halo for the first time... at MacWorld 1999? For reference, Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000. I've literally never heard the assertion that Halo was intended to be an RTS; my understanding is that it was originally going to be a third person FPS, as the 1999 MacWorld trailer suggests, but was changed to a first person FPS when Microsoft purchased them.
The earliest versions were basically built on top of Myth's engine, Bungie's RTS. It then eventually became a third person shooter, and it was such at the MacWorld announcement. It did turn into an FPS after the Microsoft acquisition.
I am not so sure. At least not for Bungie. I haven't enjoyed Destiny at all. Where on the other side, Arkane's Dishonored and Prey are quite good. So are id Software's Doom, Doom Eternal, and Wolfenstein. Fallout 4 was okay as well.
id definitely puts out super solid stuff, consistently. Arkane is also in that bucket (Deathloop is the better example to judge recent efficacy of the team, not Dishonored/Prey. And its great). But, that is counterbalanced by... Fallout 76? Warcraft 3 Reforged? The state of WoW, Overwatch, and Heroes?
Xbox's acquisitions are a semitruck full of companies. The good parts of that truck are good. The bad parts are... quite bad. But the bad parts are built on really strong IP, which carried its own high price tag. So the question becomes; they'll definitely get value out of Arkane, id, and CoD, zero question there; but will they get value out of the rest of the ~$76B combined they spent, when so much of it is in glory-day IPs and not in teams, employed today, that can execute on that IP to deliver awesome content (no disrespect intended to the teams who do work on that content today; but reality is in the metrics, revenue, etc)?
Comparatively: Microsoft bought a semi-truck, Sony bought a Miata. It's not the fastest car out there. It's not for everyone. But it has its users and there's no question as to Mazda's ability to put out another stellar model, nor question around whether customers will buy it. Plus: very affordable. Ok, that's a bad analogy.
This sounds like a long time, but it's not in game development. Putting out a solid title requires multiple years of development.
> Deathloop is the better example to judge recent efficacy of the team
Deathloop isn't on par with Arkane's previous games. It didn't even sell that well. They put it on sale a few weeks after launch to issue damage control.
I disagree. Destiny may have once had potential, but Bungie is a studio that continually shoots itself in the foot. Just like with Halo, they threw out years of work for the first Destiny and essentially stitched together a frankenstein of the parts to ship on time. It's why the story has never made sense, even as they try to retcon various pieces to fit into a much longer narrative.
The game has also lost some of its early "looter shooter with friends" charm and become a grindfest that feels like a job at times, with content that is sunset only 2-3 years after it is sold to consumers. Destiny 2 is also extremely hostile to new players, bombarding them with dozens of vendors, currencies, and no clear sense of where to start and how to begin grokking the story. The original campaign has been sunset so if you never played before, you will be missing the equivalent of the first movie of a trilogy in terms of plot and characters.
My hope for this acquisition is that it lets them course correct the design of whatever they do next because I feel that Destiny 2 is in decline.
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 particular needs some serious work - so long as Sony lets the team continue on its current trajectory, there may be hope.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pathways into Darkness and Marathon forever.
I hear they started making non-Macintosh games recently?
| 860,000 players played Destiny 2 yesterday, at a slow point in a season about to end later this month
| • 275,000 on Xbox | • 355,000 on PlayStation | • 224,000 on Steam | • 5,390 on Stadia
Destiny is not small.
There are maybe a dozen or so western service-games with 1M+ regular active players.
* Microsoft bought maybe four with the AB acquisition (CoD, Hearthstone, WoW, Overwatch, maybe D3 but probably not), and had one coming in (Minecraft. H:I qualifies for now, but its new and it remains to be seen if it has staying power).
* Valve owns two (CSGO, Dota2). They're extremely not for sale.
* Riot owns at least two (LoL/Valorant). Also not for sale; owned by Tencent.
* EA has a couple (Apex, maybe their sports titles as well). Likely out of reach for anyone to acquire.
* Epic, of course, has Fortnite.
* Rockstar has GTA5. T2 is probably on the acquisition block; expect that next, but who the buyer will be is anyone's guess. My pocket prediction is actually Epic.
To clarify: The reason why I narrowed that list to just western companies is because of the difficulty in both determining metrics for eastern games, and the difficulty in acquiring them. Chinese companies simply won't be acquired, and something many may not know: its very, very difficult for non-japanese companies to acquire japanese companies. There's a lot of government rules restricting it. PUBG is South Korean though, so it may qualify for the list; less familiar with SK's stance on western acquisitions.
Tangential: this is why you should laugh anyone out of the room who suggests Microsoft will buy FromSoftware. From is a fascinatingly weird company; owned by a Japanese multinational that mostly publishes manga & tabletop roleplaying games, to my knowledge From is Kadokawa's only video game subsidiary. On the one hand, they're a perfect acquisition for Sony given that Sony is Japanese and From is a weird company among Kadokawa's MO. On the other hand, its a massive profit center that I'm certain their overlords leave to their own devices.
That's essentially everything in the current gaming landscape. Once its all laid out, it should be obvious how valuable Destiny is to Sony: PlayStation isn't on that list. They do own something like 3-5% of Epic, but beyond that, they're seeing Microsoft make heavy investments in both discrete releases & ongoing service games. Sony has discrete releases MASTERED; they're the king, up there with Nintendo. But they don't have service games. To get a service game like Destiny, in a super popular genre (looter shooter RPG), for a couple billion, is a steal; even moreso that it gives them a card to play, maybe first, maybe second, if Microsoft ever moves to remove Call of Duty from PlayStation; its nuclear peace. Remember: Sony collects 30% of every CoD transaction on PlayStation. View the acquisition through this lens, and it adds further value to the transaction: if the threat of removing Destiny from Xbox, and thus Xbox's 30% cut of transactions there, keeps CoD on PlayStation a bit longer, it helps pay for itself.
Not really. Destiny has a smaller audience than CoD, and Activision Blizzard is a huge purchase with lots a of valuable IPs that go beyond CoD and can still grow (Bungie, OTOH, currently only has Destiny in it's catalog).
Bungie revenue was estimated around $300 million for 2019 vs. $6,5b for Activision Blizzard, so price seems to be in line for both purchases, around 8x annual rev.
Keep in mind Microsoft has bought ton of small studios as well! (Rare, Playground).
Returnal is a good title, but far from being a success by AAA standards (last time they reported sales of the game, in June 2021. it was 560.000 copies). I think part of the aura of success comes from being one of the very few exclusive titles created specifically for the PS5.
Compare that to Rift Apart, which last I heard is more in the 1-2M sales range. Insomniac is a true triple-A studio, with more like 400-500 employees plus the full development support of PSS's shared resources. Ratchet & Clank is a more broadly known franchise, in a genre and aesthetic that is more age and demographic accessible.
Additionally, while this would equally affect Returnal & Rift Apart; PS5 shortages do dampen all PS5 exclusive game sales compared to more broadly available titles.
Within that context, it's clear to me that Returnal was a tremendous success. Not a Triple-A success, but its not all about raw sales at the end of the day. Cost to produce also needs to be considered.
To be clear: I absolutely believe Xbox isn't just "all triple-A all the time". They have the triple-A teams. They have the smaller teams (Maybe not Rare/Playground as they're huge nowadays, but: Ninja Theory, Compulsion, Double Fine, World's Edge, maybe even Obsidian, plus their exclusivity deals with Moon and Asobo). Its more-so a discussion about their recent acquisitions strategy.
Strongly disagree. Bungie have one IP. while AB have many well know IPs. Blizzard proven, you can make a new game out of old IP. Warcraft is used to make Hearthstone the card game.
you are comparing one franchise IP to multiple franchise IPs and claiming Bungie is a better deal. that just stretching it.
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 tell their stories.
Activision Blizzard may have cost 20x more, but Activision is really profitable with a P/E ratio of 26 (at the $69B deal price). Microsoft's P/E is 33, Google's is 26, Apple's is 29, Amazon's is 58, and Netflix is 38 (even with the tumble in price). So Microsoft bought Activision relatively cheap compared to its earnings. Bungie is private so we don't really know what their finances are like. Activision's cheap price means that there isn't a lot of risk for Microsoft. Maybe you believe that Activision is about to crater and no one will want their games in the future. It's possible. It's also possible that everyone is going to get tired of the extensive IP catalogues that Disney has assembled. However, when the price is that reasonable, you don't need the same explosive growth to justify the investment.
So Microsoft bought a business that even if it just keeps performing as-usual will be a fine addition to Microsoft. It also has the potential to be huge for Microsoft with a deep IP catalogue, the potential for Xbox exclusives to help launch the next-gen Xbox when the time comes, the potential for cost savings with Azure infrastructure, and probably more that I'm not thinking of.
If Sony buys Bungie and just lets them do their thing, they might get some good games. But it seems like Microsoft wants to buy and pour some money in which seems like a recipe for bigger successes. We've seen it with some of Microsoft's recent purchases. They've poured money into GitHub and made it an even bigger platform. They've poured money into .NET Core and Xamarin/Mono to recapture developer mindshare. It seems like Microsoft is likely to take similar steps with their Activision purchase - and similar steps that Disney has taken with their IP catalogue.
It's possible that the small places Sony has bought have better potential, but Activision Blizard is a profitable company at a relatively cheap price which means that the purchase carries relatively low risk while still offering a lot of upside for Microsoft.
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.
Beyond the fact that this has supposedly been in the works for months, so not exactly a panic, Bungie has a new IP in development, and has announced their plan to expand Destiny beyond video games, to movies, books, and other media. So while you're right in the sense that today, Bungie only has Destiny, they've already been working on making that not true, even if they're not there just yet.
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 any better than Activision were (if anything, I can see it going downhill faster).
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.
Not to mention these are lore-rich well-known universes and could result in multimedia franchises
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.
It is sort of like if Valve actually made Half Life 3 now, most gamers don't even know what Half Life is, let alone why Half Life 3 would be such a big deal outside of being a meme.
Through that lense ActiBlizz is a great buy. Candy Crush and COD and Warcraft.
You don't need the top seller if your goal is to keep customers above the subscription cancellation threshold.
That said, I've never played the Microsoft version of Minecraft because it seems strictly worse, and also unmoddable.
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.
And Sony's move is simply a defense against that.
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.
Which is why microsoft spent $100 billion on studios this year. Zenimax and AB consistently put out hugely popular games, and I expect microsoft will continue buying.
I've played 1 game from Zenni in the last 10 years for more than a few minutes (deathloop), (tried their others no interest, hate stealth, hate super long games). One from blizzard (overwatch this one got me, like 900 hours), one from activision (warzone for like 3 days). So that stable of games wouldn't have me specifically retaining game pass, I'd just buy them. Also Halo wants to double dip you with the game and the battle pass even if you have ultimate.
I think Zenni was a much better acquisition than AB. Blizzard has some great IP, they don't have the talent to make it go anymore. Activision has what, COD and a ton of old IP they weren't doing anything with? Really Microsoft will need to take one of their solid studios that is bad at IP and good at execution give them something like Starcraft, but I don't even know how deep their stable of developers without projects is right now.
But also I realized a while ago, I have way less time than games to play. I have an unlimited 2k entitlement for instance and barely play those games (didn't like civ, not into sports games). And I do hate subscriptions that remind me constantly what I'm paying for them that I know I'm not using.
Anyway, my $0.02.
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.
- 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".
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...
Maybe printing free revenue from the franchise is more valuable than printing revenue with high overhead console sales :)
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 are notoriously hard to part with their money, even though games can deliver an incredible amount of value for each dollar compared to other types of entertainment.
I’ve put hundreds of hours into certain games that I’ve paid $60 or less for, whereas renting or going to a movie provides only a couple hours of entertainment for something like $5-$20.
I thought companies like Bungie, Bioware, etc. sold out.
i.e. it's easy to survive if you make blockbuster titles like Halo or Mass Effect, but then a big corp comes by and offers mega bucks to buy you and so you sell out. The solution if you don't want to be "under the thumb of [a] corporate overlord" is to not sell out in the first place.
Sort of a "labor theory of value" for entertainment pricing, I guess.
Also, how far down the stack do you go for each. Both rely on tools to make the production happen. Do you count hours to make the digital editing software and fx programs for films? Do you count the human hours to make Unreal4?
I doubt they count hours towards tools etc developed as they probably paid money for those. So, different bucket I guess, and still important for the overall cost.
For the more common endeavours, then no, of course - they just use what is there, or more likely outsource it to specialised providers in the same way as they would outsource e.g. building a website.
But if you factor in audience size, things get more complicated. Red Dead 2 sold about 38M copies, a near record, but Avengers Endgame reached something like 250-300M people at the box office, even before streaming etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films
Games take a lot longer to produce than films (in total, per hour of content that may not be true).
The largest expenses are related to FX costs and marketing. That's why the cost of low-effects movies falls very rapidly under 100m, you can film a run-of-the-mill romcom for less than 10m.
300M movie watchers is about half a billion hours. If those 38M games all had only one player (probably fairly close) they only have to play the game for 15 hours on average to get at half a billion player hours.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=27100 claims it takes at least 49 hours to beat it, so it’s likely that the game was played for more hours than the movie was watched.
There's a percentage of players of course that will play a game for many hundreds or thousands of hours but the calculation is shakier when you take the falloff of players into account/
https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/17/gdc-most-players-don...
Dollars per entertainment hour is just a way to try to convince gamers that it is reasonable to spend more on games, but perhaps the better argument to make is that we need to pay these companies more or they will go out of business or move to scummy pay to win business models.
It's apples to oranges anyway, even when comparing games to games.
It's a giant wall of text for 30 minutes.
This is simply wrong.
Marvel movies (and indeed, most studio releases) are generally produced and released within a year or two. Only the biggest blockbusters have crews in the hundreds, and it is rare for a movie to have a crew in the thousands. For example, Endgame is one of the most expensive movies ever made...and production and post-production (i.e., VFX) took less than 2 years. Dune (2021) was filmed and post-produced in under 2 years. Tenet, Nolan's most technically complex film, was actually filmed and post-produced in just over 1 year. (But contrast to Avatar 2 and 3, which have been in production for over 4 years and counting.)
On the other hand, almost every AAA game of the last decade has spent years in development with a crew of hundreds for almost the entire time. For example, Red Dead 2 was in development for 7 years. Starcraft 2 was in development for over 5 years. Destiny was in development for 4 years.
Note that the above timeline does not include pre-production work (like writing the screenplay, casting, hiring crew, raising funds) because in the movie industry pre-production work proceeds very slowly (for example: Avatar 2 was in pre-production for 7 years; Gemini Man for over 20 years), but the actual production and post-production (i.e., the actual making of the movie, editing, FX) happens at a lightning pace. In the game industry, the creative parts happen in tandem with the development of the game itself.
Also note that while movies can have large crews, the different teams aren't all working at the same time; for example, film crews and other production crews rarely interact with the VFX or other post-production crew.
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.
Maybe they should? The world would look quite different if companies were forced to innovate and compete rather than merge and acquire.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that some analysts estimate Microsoft paid between $20 million and $40 million for Bungie in total.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/20/microsoft-acquires-b...
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.
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...
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.
And most importantly - isn't there the LEAST growth in the hardcore gaming segment?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher#Major_pub...
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.
Pokémon does however have an AAA level marketing budget even if it doesn't have AAA level development budget.
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.
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.
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.
Good memories of that game. I still haven’t played marathon :0
It definitely started as an RTS, but it had morphed into Combat Evolved before Microsoft bought bungie.
Maybe it was just too niche as a Mac game.
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!
Sadly, they sold it off to Take Two Interactive who botched the 3rd game in the series and killed off the franchise.
I wish I could buy the IP off of Take Two and revive it, but until then I just have to settle for playing the modern ports that are still being maintained.
Also, we should play Destiny. Not to turn HN into LFG or anything.
I'm the one that makes everybody install it to play it for the first time so that everyone can experience the agonizing embarrassment of their best laid plans being thwarted by their own dwarves accidentally decimating themselves by throwing their molotov cocktails straight up into the air. "<BANG>... Casualties." followed by the inevitable, "Argh! What?!? Noooooooo!"
Never gets old.
I doubt Sony would ever sell them. :)
But yeah, it’s hard to dissociate Halo from Bungie and Microsoft.
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 acquired by Sony. From the outside looking in this seems to be because Sony understands how much creative freedom means to these teams, and they don't inject Sony management into the processes of previously successful game studios. I'd love to hear more of an insider opinion on why acquisitions over the last decade look so differently at these two companies though.
They were under Activision during the Destiny era until 2019. So if they stayed, they would've ended up back at MS. The M&A merry-go-round continues.
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 among racing players (perhaps the most popular).
Obsidian haven't started to make Xbox and PC exclusives yet, but they'll also start with that presumably next year.
I don't know where you're getting "Most of Microsoft's acquisitions in recent years have been failures." this.
On the other hand, Sony's way of buying studios is way different. Most of the times, they have already worked with those studios in past to make a PS exclusive and then they buy them. I agree that Insomniac is doing great (better than any of Microsoft's purchases), but other than that, there isn't much just like MS.
I think we will get a better picture of whose acquisitions work best after 5-6 more years.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
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.
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"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_developed_...
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.
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.
I don't know.... Honestly Rare was just as good if not better than Nintendo themselves. And that's a nearly impossible feat.
The n64 did as well as it did because of Rare. GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Banjo, Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong, Jet Force Gemini etc.. post-acquisition, Rare didn't made the same sort of games. So maybe they found new fans, but the old fans hated it. Myself included.
I can imagine them sharing all sorts of things between studios now that they have the same ownership. It will at least allow shared lunch time conversations to be less guarded
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.
Phil Spencer also said he hopes Sony and Nintendo will preserve the gaming ecosystem unlike those others.
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.
The loser is game devs, who must either (a) do extra dev AND pay higher fees to integrate deeply with each platform, or (b) integrate minimally with each platform and compete with titles that get a leg-up from users' sunk costs into the network service.
tl;dr - the online service is the new console
Halo Infinite released same day on Xbox and PC. That's never happened for a mainline Halo game before.
[0] Phil Spencer confirms all first-party Xbox Series X games are 'coming to PC' https://www.pcgamer.com/phil-spencer-confirms-all-first-part...
[1] Sony wants to bring more first-party games to PC https://www.pcgamer.com/sonys-new-strategy-brings-more-of-it...
- Sony
- Microsoft
- Electronic Arts
- Capcom
- Ubisoft
- Nintendo
- Konami
- Square Enix
- Tencent
- Take Two
- Warner Brother Games
- Embracer Group
IP license biz model (Disney, Sega, etc...)
I'd include Valve, but they just don't make games anymore
edit: Added Embracer
Souls games sell really well, although not close to CoD or Destiny numbers. I feel like Elden Ring will be huge, though.
I'm sure Sony is terrified of a world where MS keeps buying up hugely popular cross platform games and shutting them off.
Sony said they want to keep Bungie cross platform. Maybe they're doing this to barter for Call of Duty with MS.
I don't know what you're talking about. All consoles have exclusives. It's just that Microsoft's exclusives were not that good. Sure they had couple, but it's nothing compared to the number of hits from Sony or Nintendo.
As a Sony fan, I'm cautiously optimistic that the relationship could be more fruitful than that. I don't know what Sony's creative secrets are, but they seem good at ushering high quality, interesting games with broad appeal into existence, sort of akin to what you see at HBO or Pixar. I would love to see them exert that influence on a big multiplatform game.
Microsoft's last 2 big acquisitions have been publishers with many underlying studios all included... I don't know that I can think of Sony really ever doing that; they've mostly bought up individual studios. Of course they're not nearly as big as Microsoft is.
Yes since 2019
Being able to play any game from the past (x publishers only) on your Xbox/ps for a monthly fee is a giant fight brewing.
You mean Warner Bros. Discovery, since ATT is spinning off the Media and merging with Discovery to from the new company Warner Bros. Discovery
https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/20/microsoft-acquires-b...
Almost 22 years ago.
Hope Bungie has something in the works that is 3.6B
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.
I would expect that the spin-offs or DLCs and the new IP from those studios to make them exclusive.
Maybe you're referring to that they don't have many IPv4s available, because Sony is in no lack of strong Intellectual Properties when it comes to gaming. Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon Zero Dawn), Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank), Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Dexter, Uncharted, The Last of Us), Santa Monica Studio (God of War), Polyphony Digital (Gran Turismo) and more are all part of PlayStation Studios which is a division of Sony IE. Most of the studios in PlayStation Studios are big time IP in the industry.
So I wonder if this ties into Sony's upcoming PS Now replacement gaming subscription service, you get Destiny content while your PS sub is active.
It will be interesting to see if the transition the existing Season system to being included with a PS subscription. I’d imagine they’ll keep expansions as separate purchases, but seasons get pretty pricey on top.
This is the meme:
"Mom can we get an Activision"
"You have an Activision at home!"
Activision at home is destiny
1. 2025 is the target for launch
2. some job postings have indicated that it's probably cooperative multiplayer in some form
Current Bungie is Destiny 2.
I wish Sony could make a decent FPS with a great story. Something like Mass Effect or Halo. Killzone was okay I suppose, but the story was lackluster and the combat involved far too much hiding behind boxes.
It feels like I suddenly have butterflies in my stomach. <3
Destiny 3 will probably be exclusive to Playstation though.
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!
Destiny, especially Destiny 2 was really mismanaged by the directors though.
They do have another IP, Matter in the works though.
Forsaken pulled it back into being a game I enjoyed but I stopped playing during DLC1 it was so bad.
> We will continue pursuing our vision of one, unified Bungie community, building games that value our community and meet them wherever and however they choose to play
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220131005684/en/
Seems they'll aim for making it available for multiple platforms, not PlayStation exclusive.