Sony has accomplished its $3.6 billion acquisition of Future 2 developer Bungie. In a tweet saying the deal, the corporate welcomed the studio to the PlayStation household, whereas Bungie CEO Pete Parsons referred to as it a “large daring step ahead” on his Twitter account.
On his personal account, PlayStation Studios head Herman Hulst praised Bungie for its “ground-breaking video games,” and stated that he appears to be like ahead to “chart[ing] a daring course for SIE, PlayStation Studios, and Bungie.”
The profitable closing of the deal implies that Sony and Bungie appear to have cleared scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Commerce Fee.
Bungie has now taken a very lengthy journey as a sport developer throughout an array of various statues. First it was an unbiased sport developer. Then it was owned by Microsoft, creating the Xbox-exclusive Halo collection. Then it break up off and printed Future with Activision Blizzard, then it went totally unbiased once more. Now it is owned by Sony Interactive Leisure.
Its future most likely does not contain a PlayStation-exclusive model of Future 2, however it would undoubtedly be contributing to the supercharged cycle of subscription companies and cross-media manufacturing that the corporate is revving up.
Our imaginative and prescient is to make Bungie the perfect place anybody within the leisure business will ever work – a middle of inventive and technical excellence for our staff, our gamers, and the communities we name house.
— pete parsons (@pparsons) July 15, 2022
The place will Sony take Bungie from right here?
Primarily based on the clues supplied by Sony executives and Bungie’s bulletins, we do have some sense of what is subsequent for the home that when made Halo.
For example, we already know that Sony desires Bungie to assist it launch 10 dwell service video games by 2026. We additionally know {that a} $100 million funding from NetEase in 2018 probably spurred the event of cellular video games inside Bungie’s hallowed halls. (NetEase just lately launched Diablo Immortal in partnership with Blizzard, and is supporting the sport in China. Its launch has been delayed.)
We additionally know that Sony is hungry to carry PlayStation-owned manufacturers to dwell motion by way of PlayStation Productions. Which may imply we’ll see a Future TV present or movie sooner or later; it may additionally imply one among Bungie’s promised new IPs is being revved up for max IP exploitation.
What might be price watching is how “unbiased” Bungie is allowed to stay, particularly within the weeks after the corporate loudly protested the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. In social media posts, firm representatives said that “there’ll by no means be a ‘muzzle’ sufficiently big to cease us from standing up for what’s proper” (Parsons himself would endorse the sentiment).
Sony has apparently restricted its studios from making statements on abortion and reproductive rights. That coverage both was reversed, or Sony studios intentionally disobeyed that edict when Roe v. Wade was lastly overturned.
We do not know but if Bungie will finally discover itself below related strain to talk much less loudly about such points, or if will probably be capable of leverage its place to assist different Sony studios acquire related independence.
If we’re swirling our crystal ball round, we would as nicely level out that Bungie is now one among SIE’s few studios with experience in publishing video games on PC. The PlayStation platform holder have been making prolonged efforts to place unique video games on Steam, and it is indicated that extra ports of this nature might be a part of its monetary future.
We’ll additionally go forward and predict that Bungie might be not the final firm that SIE will purchase. CEO Jim Ryan has stated that it is pursuing acquisitions within the identify of a “virtuous cycle” of success.
