Sony x Bungie: What are they actually paying for?
By Samuel Dirkis
On the 31st of January 2022, Sony Interactive Entertainment, the makers of the PlayStation console, announced they would be acquiring legendary video game studio Bungie for $3.6 billion USD. According to both parties, Bungie will remain almost entirely independent, and Sony doesn’t plan to take any of Bungie’s video games exclusive.
In Sony’s acquisition announcement, they affirmed their decision to allow Bungie the option “to self-publish and reach players wherever they chose to play”.
This begs the question; what is Sony actually paying for?
In terms of products, the only game that Bungie has to offer is Destiny. While Destiny is one of the biggest games on the planet with its latest expansion having broken over 1 million pre-orders. Not to mention that Destiny as a game is sort of unique. Almost every single major video game publisher has tried and failed to make a “Destiny”. EA tried it with Anthem however, that was dead on arrival. Ubisoft tried it with the Division and while that did see some success, it never managed to reach the heights of Destiny. Even Square Enix and Marvel tried with their Avengers game which ended up having a shelf life of about 12 months. From that perspective, it does make a lot of sense to just buy the studio that makes the style of game you are after.
But still, 3.6 billion is a lot to pay for one game and one studio. To put that into perspective, in 2021 Microsoft purchased Bethesda/ZeniMax for $7.5 billion USD. Through this deal, Microsoft gained 8 triple-A game studios, the exclusive publishing rights to world-renown franchises like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Doom to name a few. Sony spent about half that and seemingly doesn’t have any plans to take any of Bungie’s current or future franchises exclusive.
It’s possible that Sony is less interested in this from a video game IP perspective and more for the talent and multi-media perspective. Sony has consistently put out some of the best games ever made. For example, in 2020 Last of Us Part II broke the record for the most game of the year awards given to a single title. However, Sony hasn’t seemed to be able to put out a single solid live service game or shooter, both things that Bungie has seemly become the masters of. Add to that, Sony has set aside 1.2 billion of their deal towards employee incentive plans. In order to get them to keep Bungies currently talent. There is also the possibility of a Destiny film franchise. Bungie has been pretty open about wanting to move Destiny into other forms of media, and given that Sony has a production house, it’s not a stretch to say they would be more than willing to make that happen.
This is also an odd deal from the perspective of Bungie. They have been through this before. Way back in 2000, Microsoft bought Bungie, then a few years later in 2007 Bungie announced they were leaving Microsoft. And another few years after that they signed a publishing deal with Activision. Only to yet again leave, before the deal had run its course. All that goes to say that Bungie as a company has always been very independent. Given the rapidly changing landscape of the gaming world, Bungie management possibly saw this as necessar. It was unlikely they were ever going to get a better deal.
At the end of the day, only time will tell if this ends up being a worthwhile deal for both parties. It does however to speak the sentiment of industry insiders. Regardless of who you are it seems to be only a matter of time until you get swallowed by one of the bigger fish in the industry.