As Microsoft continues to buy up studios across the industry, Sony isn't far behind, as they have their own acquisition to announce. Bungie, known for developing the Halo series and more recently, Destiny, will be joining the PlayStation family. Sony purchased the team in a deal valued at $3.6 billion. While it may not be as staggering as the Activision deal that Microsoft made, it shows that these major studio buyouts won't be stopping any time soon.

Originally, Bungie started out as an independent developer, and would go on to be purchased by Microsoft in 2000, where they created Halo: Combat Evolved. They would stay with Microsoft until the year 2007, when they split and became their own private company. After that, Bungie signed a contract with Activision that lead to Destiny and Destiny 2.

Sony has prefaced the deal with the fact that Bungie, despite the acquisition, will remain an independent studio and publisher, and will continue to work on multi platform releases.

“I am absolutely thrilled to announce a new member will be joining the PlayStation family!

I’ve been a fan of Bungie for many years. I have admired and enjoyed the games that they create – and have great respect for their skill in building worlds that gamers want to explore again and again.

Bungie makes games with outstanding technology that are enormously fun to play. They also have unmatched dedication to the communities that play their games, and everyone at PlayStation, and PlayStation Studios, will be excited about what we can share and learn from them.

I have spent a great deal of time with the senior team at Bungie and it is clear their experience and skills are highly complementary to our own.We will be ready to welcome and support Bungie as they continue to grow, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this incredible team.“

Source

 

[nikeymikey]

Sony certainly had some howlers on the security front (see said C3 presentation actually*) and I am certainly open to exploring incentives and results obtained for things (it is normally where I look) but I don't know how explanatory it is in this case -- might be free but Sony still faced massive PR backlash, and were in the business of showing themselves to be a viable competitor so might even have been a loss leader, were still beholden to the companies that put stuff on their platform...

*save people a search. Console hacking 2010 at 27c3 if this link is down in the future

Agreed, but from experience… I used to host modded MW2 lobbies on my PS3 (Hawkin’s Zombieland) and got reported by unhappy users many times for it. Never had a peep out of Sony, no bans or anything.
Where as I have been banned on XBL multiple times simply for swearing in a chat message!!

 

[KingVamp]

I think the last thing that Nintendo bought was Monolith Soft.

Actually, it was Next Level Games.

 

[Stone_Wings]

Fact remains that Sony's console is once again winning the console wars (between Sony and MS). People talking about poor Sony after the Bethshitda acquisition and how Sony needs to compete with Game Pass and Sony needs to do this and that, and Sony are in trouble, and Sony Sony Sony. Like I Said, once again we have the Sony console dominating the market over the MS offerings. Sony don't need to do ANYthing. They already won, again. (Coming from someone who currently owns a Switch and Series X, but not a PS5. I sold the PS5 and will get another once God of War is out.)

 

[FAST6191]

Sony don't need to do ANYthing. They already won

There are phrases about resting on laurels, on preparing to fight the next war.

 

[Stone_Wings]

There are phrases about resting on laurels, on preparing to fight the next war.

Yeah. And people have made phrases about Sony resting on laurels for ages, yet they have still won every console gen against MS. By a long shot. The only reason the 360 was in the process of catching up to the PS3, was because of the RRoD and people having to purchase more than one 360. It appears people care more about Sony exclusives than they do MS's Game Pass. A 5-6 million difference in sales is quite substantial. Sony doesn't need to worry about anything as they obviously know what they're doing, despite anyones claims of otherwise.