A wacky, $3.6 billion end to gaming-acquisition January: Sony buys Bungie

After Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, talk turned to how Sony and its PlayStation division would deal with the fallout of the purchase. If the Xbox becomes the exclusive home of Call of Duty games, would Sony be left out of the megaton first-person shooter space? Would Sony fire back with a major acquisition of its own?

On Monday, Sony announced plans to acquire Bungie and its Destiny series of shooters in a deal reportedly valued at $3.6 billion (in an email to Ars Technica, a Sony rep declined to confirm that figure). Somehow, this pricey purchase includes a firm pledge from Bungie, despite its new corporate overlords: Bungie’s “future games” will not be PlayStation exclusives.

Bungie had clearly prepared to announce this news to its active Destiny 2 user base, which plays on a variety of non-PlayStation platforms like Steam, Google Stadia, and (of course) Xbox. Its Destiny 2-specific FAQ confirms that the game’s current content map is set until at least 2024, when a project dubbed “The Final Shape” launches. All planned content will continue to work cross-platform without any PlayStation “console exclusive” forks or DLC, the company said.

What if Activision had held on for two more years?

What does Sony get from this deal, then? In addition to the potential revenue that might be derived from Bungie’s current and future projects, even on rival platforms, PlayStation chief Hermen Hulst hinted that Bungie would bring value to the entire PlayStation portfolio. In his announcement of today’s news, Hulst says his team “will be excited about what we can share and learn” from Bungie. This doesn’t necessarily mean that portions of the Bungie staff will become secondary development teams on PlayStation-exclusive games or that the PC-focused teams will take the lead on PC ports of existing console-exclusive titles. But becoming part of the PlayStation first-party family would allow Sony to redirect Bungie’s efforts in a way that doesn’t strip “Bungie” games of their cross-platform promises.

This week’s news follows Bungie’s efforts to extricate itself from a publishing deal with Activision, which concluded in 2019 with Bungie buying itself out of the deal. Shortly after that deal was concluded, Destiny 2 found its way to more platforms, particularly Steam, as a free-to-play, cross-save franchise. Activision later revealed in investor reports that the buyout cost the Destiny 2 studio less than $200 million to complete.

The Monday announcement curiously lacks any mention of NetEase, the Chinese gaming publisher that became a minority stakeholder in Bungie in 2018. That deal exceeded $100 million, and today’s news likely means the publisher is being bought out of its stake in Bungie’s current and future efforts. At the time of the NetEase deal, Bungie indicated that the partnership would enable “new directions” for the studio, though it’s unclear if this was in reference to the 2019 breakup with Activision or any other non-Destiny games that have yet to surface.

Today’s news was apparently so shrouded in secrecy that Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier broke the news to current Bungie employees. “Several Bungie staff learned it from me this morning as I tried to break the news,” Schreier wrote on Twitter. He wrote that Bungie’s staff members got the official news from their bosses this morning at the same time that Bungie’s and Sony’s official announcements went live on the Internet.

From Marathon to whatever Sony has cooking

This week’s news marks a surprising turn of events for a developer currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. Bungie began life as a predominantly Apple-focused game developer who gave Mac gamers their own celebrated, exclusive first-person shooter series in Marathon. Then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Halo’s first-ever gameplay footage to the world at a MacWorld keynote address, and shortly afterward, Microsoft snuck up and outright acquired Bungie in order to secure a valuable gaming exclusive for its original Xbox console. The following decade saw Microsoft and Bungie collaborate and squabble on all things Halo until they struck a deal for the game maker’s independence.

Now, in the wake of Microsoft spending a ton of money on (among other things) a platform-defining first-person shooter, Sony has apparently done the same. But as we’ve learned in the days since the Microsoft-Activision deal was inked, Microsoft may still have at least a couple of years of agreements to abide by to guarantee that brand-new Call of Duty games arrive on PlayStation consoles through 2023. Again, Sony’s deal echoes Microsoft’s here, as Bungie has committed to honoring plans to keep Destiny 2 and other “Bungie” games cross-platform and independent.