Sony buys Bungie, Destiny team "will be joining the PlayStation family"
The move is being seen as a response to Xbox buying Activision
In a surprising move, Sony is acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion USD (which is over £2.6 billion GBP). Or to put that another way, the company behind the PlayStation consoles is buying the company behind the Destiny video-game franchise.
The news was broken on Twitter by Jason Schreier, one of the most respected gaming journalists on the planet, who currently works for Bloomberg and previously worked at Kotaku.
"Sony is buying Bungie, the maker of Destiny," Schreier wrote in one Tweet.
He added in another post, "Both parties did a decent job keeping this secret —several Bungie staff learned it from me this morning as I tried to break the news. Bungie held an all-hands meeting at 10am PT to tell everyone at the same time as it went public."
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan has now confirmed the news, stating in a PlayStation Blog post, "I am happy to announce Bungie will be joining the PlayStation family."
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Ryan was quick to confirm, "Bungie will remain an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher," a statement that quickly puts to bed any fears that the Destiny franchise will be ripped from non-Sony platforms.
It sounds like the Destiny games will remain on Xbox consoles, too.
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Bungie has a storied history of acquisitions and high-profile agreements, and this Sony deal is the latest in a long line of massive deals.
It all started in 1991 - Bungie was founded in that year and had early successes with game franchises Marathon and Myth.
Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and created the Halo franchise that helped launch the original Xbox console. In 2007, Bungie split from Microsoft, although the two companies continued to collaborate until their final project, 2010's Halo Reach, was finished.
Bungie went on to sign a 10-year publishing deal with Activision - this resulted in Bungie developing Destiny and Destiny 2, a pair of massively popular online shooter games in the sci-fi genre, both of which were originally published by Activision. Bungie ended its deal with Activision in 2020, taking over the publishing reins on the Destiny franchise itself.
And now comes the news that Sony is buying Bungie, which adds another layer of intrigue to this ever-growing tapestry that is the company's history.
Sony's Jim Ryan added in his blog post: "I have spent a lot of time with Pete Parsons, Jason Jones, and the Bungie management team to develop the right relationships where they will be fully backed and supported by Sony Interactive Entertainment and enabled to do what they do best — build incredible worlds that captivate millions of people."
This news comes shortly after the announcement that Microsoft (the company behind the Xbox consoles) is acquiring Activision Blizzard (the company behind the Call of Duty video-game franchise), and it's hard not to see these deals as being somehow related.
Certainly, Sony and Microsoft seem keen to double down on the number of development studios they own, which should ultimately be good news for people that own their consoles and subscribe to their membership clubs (including Sony's rumoured PlayStation Game Pass service).
We'll be sure to keep you posted as we hear more about Sony/Bungie's future plans.
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