so it's been give or take less than two weeks since Microsoft confirmed they were acquiring massive publisher and it's game development studios, Activision Blizzard which shook up the gaming industry asking what's next for Activision Blizzard, where does this mean for cross platform gaming and perhaps the biggest pondering point, how will Sony respond.
Many suggested that Sony may not need to respond, they have had no issues really with first party titles, they are probably the premier of the two bigger consoles and despite huge success with GamePass - the Xbox is just not the popular choice worldwide.
The timing may make it seem like this is an immediate response from Sony and perhaps it is in terms of releasing information now but at least according to Sony and Bungie it's hinted that this has been in discussion for a little while and is not a knee jerk response from Sony to simple put down money tot take a developer away from the competition.
Done this before
Bungie have been in this position before with Microsoft, before Bungie went solo again before entering into a 10 year publishing deal with Activision Blizzard which lasted 8 years before Bungie terminated that contract - rumours circled on the internet that Activision Blizzard were some kind of evil overlord but Bungie has always denied this was the case and the break up was down to difference of opinion of the future of Destiny.
The words Bungie and Sony are using are a little sus to myself, I don't have a degree in business finance but the word partnering and independent was used a lot, the only reason I can imagine this choice of words being used was to put Destiny fans at ease, because it has a lot of fans! The other possible reason for this choice of words is the big fear we all have of gamers - good studios being killed off because the purchasing company tried to incorporate them into their structure rather than letting the creative juices flow.
I did write a whole other massive segment of text about how both Microsoft and Sony have both failed some legendary studios in the past and I'm fairly certain I missed a lot, might publish that outside of this little post because it went way to off topic.. so back on focus
Why Bungie?
Sony is huge, they clearly feel based on multiple reports that Destiny as a brand can go a lot further than just the massive game that it is, someone at Sony looks at Destiny perhaps in the same manner that Disney looked at Star Wars - a single franchise that can be told across multiple platforms and avenues across varied points of interest - in other words Destiny is vast and can be more than just a single game, spin offs from the main game with a spotlight focus on an event or charecter, prequels, sequels and of course TV shows and Movies.
Lets not forget this is the same studio that created Halo - possibly the biggest game to ever hit the mac Xbox and of course the fact that Destiny in both instalments brought in something around $150 million on launch for both games - they know how to build an engaging world and given Destiny 2 is entering it's 5th year and just about to drop new DLC .. they know how to support a game as well as the likes of Rockstar.
Destiny being removed from other platforms?
According to this article, this one no, Destiny and "future games" will be cross platform, the problem with the choice of words cross platform is - we know both Microsoft and Sony recently have been taking console games and porting them to PC..
So could be a little word play here but we in our house here have debated this to death and come to the conclusion that while Microsoft has Call of Duty a huge game for both PS and XB players, now Sony has Destiny under it's belt and I feel like this is the perfect trade off - Playstation and Xbox will no doubt do some form of early exclusivity of GamePass type logic for the games they own making them more accessible and earlier accessible on their own platforms but to remove them entirely? nah, too much money to be had by putting great games on everything.
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For those that grow tired of reading my random thoughts
And that's about it for this purchase, so what do you think - I'm somewhat leaning to Bungie eventually going independent again but does this signal a new IP? Destiny 3 perhaps or will those TV shows and movies I spoke of come to light?