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[danklord]

3b for one or two IP at max with no guarantee that it will be a huge hit? Bungie is not even worth 1b at this point. They could easily revive Killzone, Resistance, or even military based TPS game like SOCOM and Syphon Filter and develop them to have a robust multiplayer. Jim Ryan made a doodoo with this one.

Seems like a reasonable bet when Activision went for 68 billion, Call of Duty alone is worth 31 billion.

Those franchises you mentioned were not major hits and never came close to Destiny or Halo in terms of success. They cannot get it done with what they have, so they paid a reasonable amount to acquire a highly skilled studio. Makes sense to me.

 

[adamsapple]

Good timing lmao.

 

[Thabass]

That explains the layoffs.

 

[fred420170]

They bought bungie on layaway like they shopping at K-mart lol

 

[Rambone]

What a waste.

 

[blue velvet]

Seems like a reasonable bet when Activision went for 68 billion, Call of Duty alone is worth 31 billion.

Those franchises you mentioned were not major hits and never came close to Destiny or Halo in terms of success. They cannot get it done with what they have, so they paid a reasonable amount to acquire a highly skilled studio. Makes sense to me.

Because those were developed with single player in mind first and foremost, the multiplayer just weren't good enough to compete with other games. With that 3b they had, they could easily build studios capable of turning those games into having competent multiplayer modes, while at the same time rebooting their old classic IPs. Just imagine a proper next gen SOCOM, Resistance, or even Killzone? There's literally no guarantee Bungie's next game will be a huge hit and profitable enough.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Why buy Bungie when you can get a good japanese developer...

Definitely agreed. I’m guessing because Bungie fits into Sony’s quest for live service games and Destiny is still popular. Also, imo it seems like Sony doesn’t particularly care for Japanese developers especially with their new found direction and trajectory.

 

[nani17]

How much would have take two cost?

Edit ok billions more lol

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

How much would have take two cost?

Edit ok billions more lol

Like 10x the cost

 

[DForce]

its funny how some people laughing at this.
Isnt this applies the same when Microsoft acquire Zenimax? i dont think Zenimax is doing well either.

Especially after Redfall and Statfield. Even Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo.

 

[FMX]

With all the money that Microsoft has burned through over the years it's scary that Phil said that Bungie was not worth what they were seeking but Sony paid a tidy sum for them. Wonder if they knew something Sony didn't?

 

[Loomy]

This year its like half of that. Sony basically saved bungie. I would eat a big crow if it will ever be worth it for sony. I expect bungie to be independent before 2030.

Yeah but Sony had no idea that would happen where they made the offer.

 

[GrouchyGamer]

Why?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Sony should have canceled the acquisition last minute, I'm a bit surprised there wasn't any language in the acquisition contract that could let them back out if there was any material financial change in the acquired company

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Disney bought Star Wars for $4B and Marvel for $3.9B, wtf was Sony thinking with this.

Different time, different era, different industry. Disney has made a killing on that deal, but also admittedly taken the golden goose and almost killed it as well.

Cheap deals like that don't come around often.

Sony is thinking: we want an entry point into GaaS. The Bungie deal may ultimately fail, but they are going to give it a concerted effort and their best chance of success is through an established player. Way cheaper than the other GaaS alternatives on the market.

If it ends up being a success, 3.7B ends up looking mighty cheap.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Disney bought Star Wars for $4B and Marvel for $3.9B, wtf was Sony thinking with this.

They needed a COD alternative not knowing at the time how long PS could keep COD past the existing two year deal. And Bungie is the only independent studio with a shooter GAAS model as all the other key shooter games are owned by huge corporations so they arent attainable.

When the deal was agreed upon it was right at the height of gaming (post covid in early 2022 when things were normalizing). So at the time, all gaming company metrics were sky high in sales and hiring employees as just about anything tech related company during covid shot through the roof (check out Zoom Video and Peloton for the ultimate roller coaster riding feast of famine from covid. The sales and profits are like night and day when comparing to 2023).

The problem with any company like Bungie is that they are an all or nothing company as they focus on one product at a time. And it's literally one product. Not even one product line. And right now it's Destiny 2. When things are rolling in it, the company is on fire hitting the jackpot. When the product lags where people are bailing and not spending it'll be dark ages (layoffs and missing forecasts by 45%, it's going down with the ship). Name one large company who misses annual sales forecasts by 45%. You dont get that with decently sized companies with broad product lines. Youll be lucky to see a miss of 4.5%. But when you got all eggs in one basket, it can be a whipsaw of +45% if everything clicks, or -45% if it's a trainwreck.

If Sony really just needed help with GAAS, they could always hire contractors or consultants for advice, but due to pressures of COD they forced themselves to just buy out Bungie. If a company needs GAAS help, you dont spend $3.6 billion to buy out an entire company with around 1,500 employees.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Name one large company who misses annual sales forecasts by 45%. You dont get that with decently sized companies with broad product lines. Youll be lucky to see a miss of 4.5%. But when you got all eggs in one basket, it can be a whipsaw of +45% if everything clicks, or -45% if it's a trainwreck.

If you look under the surface of most large corporations, this happens all the time for various business lines.

If you look at gaming studios in particular, they have a 95+% revenue decline in years they aren't releasing products if they are a single player type studio. So, from that lens, a 45% drop isn't as catastrophic, that's one of the appeals of something like Bungie in that they have annual cashflows that are more stable and reliable than annual cashflows of SP studios.

So in the context of a portfolio of studios, Bungie's performance is somewhat acceptable as long as they can turn things around like they have in the past.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Sony's most recent statement on the matter:

 

[StreetsofBeige]

If you look under the surface of most large corporations, this happens all the time for various business lines.

If you look at gaming studios in particular, they have a 95+% revenue decline in years they aren't releasing products if they are a single player type studio. So, from that lens, a 45% drop isn't as catastrophic, that's one of the appeals of something like Bungie in that they have annual cashflows that are more stable and reliable than annual cashflows of SP studios.

So in the context of a portfolio of studios, Bungie's performance is somewhat acceptable as long as they can turn things around like they have in the past.

The fact they missed internal forecasts by 45% shows the sales they are getting from Destiny has dropped like a rock. No successful company misses a corporate sales target by 45%.

If you look under the surface of most large corporations, this happens all the time for various business lines.

Many companies do post in earnings reports performance by division or key product lines. Even Sony does. Feel free post any that showed they missed by 45%.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

The fact they missed internal forecasts by 45% shows the sales they are getting from Destiny has dropped like a rock. No successful company misses a corporate sales target by 45%.

There are plenty of successful companies that miss short term targets and manage to weather the storm into a successful future.

Many companies do post in earnings reports performance by division or key product lines. Even Sony does. Feel free post any that showed they missed by 45%.

You can literally see the largest company in the world which has had enormous misses throughout their history. At one point they were not successful, my point is, that doesn't mean they can't change course and turn into a massive success.

 

[hlm666]

Different time, different era, different industry. Disney has made a killing on that deal, but also admittedly taken the golden goose and almost killed it as well.

Cheap deals like that don't come around often.

Sony is thinking: we want an entry point into GaaS. The Bungie deal may ultimately fail, but they are going to give it a concerted effort and their best chance of success is through an established player. Way cheaper than the other GaaS alternatives on the market.

If it ends up being a success, 3.7B ends up looking mighty cheap.

Wouldn't going in house to their mobile fate game devs to help with gaas stuff be a way cheaper alternative? Hell get them to make a ps5 gaas or something.

 

[Kilau]

Different time, different era, different industry. Disney has made a killing on that deal, but also admittedly taken the golden goose and almost killed it as well.

Cheap deals like that don't come around often.

Sony is thinking: we want an entry point into GaaS. The Bungie deal may ultimately fail, but they are going to give it a concerted effort and their best chance of success is through an established player. Way cheaper than the other GaaS alternatives on the market.

If it ends up being a success, 3.7B ends up looking mighty cheap.

It wasn’t that long ago, 2009 and 2012 and Sony is in the movie industry. $3.7B for Bungle seemed crazy last year and even more so now. Destiny is in bad shape so they hardly seem like the gaas experts to help Sony deliver a huge hit. This acquisition seems as bad as the Insomniac one was good.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

It wasn’t that long ago, 2009 and 2012 and Sony is in the movie industry. $3.7B for Bungle seemed crazy last year and even more so now. Destiny is in bad shape so they hardly seem like the gaas experts to help Sony deliver a huge hit. This acquisition seems as bad as the Insomniac one was good.

They’re one of the few successful players. You don’t become a 10 year franchise without success.

Whether it’s a good investment on Sony’s part remains to be seen, but people are too quick to judge its potential on one disappointing year.

Sony’s brilliance with Insomniac was marrying them to popular IP; they were never good at that themselves

 

[Negotiator101]

How to waste 3.7 Billion.

Bungie started the PS GaaS era so don't discount them just yet, you got 6 coming and another possibility of 6 further away

 

[yurinka]

We had reports that bungie got alot of them delayed or cancelled. I doubt naughty dog needed assistance from bungie when the last time they had a 90 plus game was like 15 years ago.

These reports are fake news.

The reality is that Bungie only can greenlight, delay or cancel their own games or milestones, and not the other SIE published ones (the ones from PS Studios).

According to Sony SIE now has a Live Services Center of Excellence Team. A team where there isn't only Bungie, but there's SIE Publishing, PS Studios and Bungie and what this team does is to review and overview the GaaS specific parts (monetization, related internal metrics statistics, post launch support roadmap, readiness for launch, server stuff etc) of all SIE (so Bungie + PS Studios) GaaS titles.

So Bungie can't even delay or cancel PS Studio's GaaS titles, they only -together with PS Studios and SIE publishing, it isn't Bungie specific decision or role- overview, review and give suggestions or support on GaaS topics of GaaS games.

This is a separate thing/team of the PS Studios & SIE publishing editorial team who greenlights games or milestones, the ones who decide if PS Studios titles get delayed or greenlighted.

Totoki said yesterday they continue with the 12 GaaS (so none of them is cancelled) but several of them got delayed to improve its quality because they weren't as good as they wanted, and seems that half of them pretty likely won't be released before April 2026 (their original plan), but still don't know when are going to be released because they are working on it and for them the most important thing is quality (not having them on a specific date).

Whoever made up these fake news maybe heard something about this and got it wrong.

When asked about the supposed layoffs reported in the media, he said that one of the goals with the acquisitions was to make the studios more efficient, and as part of that Bungie fired around 100 people in 'indirect' divisions (I assume he meant not core gamedev divisions, but instead areas like publishing or marketing already covered by SIE for all their studios, so that now don't need the amount of people they had inside Bungie).

So other than that, the other (real) firings may have been isolated cases of every company where every year they fire and hire a few people.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Disney bought Star Wars for $4B and Marvel for $3.9B, wtf was Sony thinking with this.

I agree. Really dented their cash reserves too.

 

[SoraNoKuni]

So they didn't fire a single person, apparently.
/s

 

[GrouchyGamer]

Should have just put that towards buying Square/Enix instead.

 

[twinspectre]

You're right, go make a bunch of games from irrelevant franchises from the past. Good choice.

I thought Sony had the talent to make great stuff, ya know they could've take these IPs and made them "Relevant".

 

[tmlDan]

I thought Sony had the talent to make great stuff, ya know they could've take these IPs and made them "Relevant".

They can make new IP's not use old ideas that nobody cares about anymore

 

[//DEVIL//]

 

[twinspectre]

They can make new IP's not use old ideas that nobody cares about anymore

"New Ips", in fact these new IPs are GAAS.

 

[tmlDan]

"New Ips", in fact these new IPs are GAAS.

You just changed subjects for no reason, go troll on twitter/X.

 

[March Climber]

Sony:

 

[twinspectre]

You just changed subjects for no reason, go troll on twitter/X.

How did I changed the subjects? Go read some gaming news, and you'll find out how many GAAS they are going to make.

 

[Stamps1646]

 

[Freeman76]

Thats one stupid purchase