In a rather shocking turn of events, Sony has announced that it’s acquiring Destiny developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. The latter will join PlayStation Studios but remain fully independent with Destiny 2 and all of its content, both present and future, remaining available on all platforms (which includes upcoming projects). What does Sony gain from this acquisition then?
According to GamesIndustry’s Christopher Dring on Twitter, it’s to “help boost their own abilities to make live-service, multi-platform games. Equally, Sony unlocks the potential to Bungie to strengthen its technical capabilities and the prospect of taking its games to movies/TV.” This acquisition also wasn’t made in response to Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard or even Take-Two Interactive acquiring Zynga.
As Dring notes, “The deal was in the works for the past 5/6 months.” Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan also said that, “‘We should expect more’ when it comes to further PlayStation acquisitions.”
Sony’s acquisitions over the years has been nothing to scoff at with Insomniac Games, Housemarque, Bluepoint Games, Firesprite Studios, and Nixxes Software joining the PlayStation brand. Where Bungie’s resources will fit into all of this remains to be seen, especially given how saturated the live-service market already is. As always, stay tuned for more information in the coming months.