Bungie Be Jumpin’

Chris Loustaunau, Staff Reporter

On Jan. 31 Sony announced that they will be buying out Bungie Inc. Now that Sony has Bungie, they finally have a competition with other flagship games, while Microsoft has Minecraft and Halo. Sony just bought the company of the game that made worldwide sales and put Microsoft Xbox on the board. Sony believes that they will get a return on their investment rather quickly. This sparks Sony’s interest in making new IP games, but in a recent interview with the director of the business Zhach Russel, he wants to bring “at least one new IP before 2025.”

 Sony’s plan with bungie is to keep Destiny 2 cross-platform and restrict favoring to Sony and keep exclusives out of the picture. Currently, Sony isn’t in the position to direct were Bungie will be going. 

Sony has a multitude of first party developers and the acquisition of Bungie adds to the big advantage that Sony has held on Microsoft for the past 20 years.

This deal has been in progress for months now and it wasn’t just a retort to Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, and Bethesda; all first party companies that Microsoft now owns.  Now that Bungie has the funding to increase the content in Destiny 2 we still don’t know what’s to come. What this means for Bungie is that they now have more resources to maintain the livelihood of the game. Sony has respected Bungie’s freedom from Activision and allowed them to remain independent from Sony’s contract. The livelihood of Destiny currently is perfect as is, the sandbox is currently under revision because of the new expansion coming out on Feb. 22.

Sony knows that they will gain back on their investment in shorts notice. Ever since Bungie left Activision, Destiny has been more creative, lore wise, and the company met a substantial increase in players because of this. Under Sony’s ownership Bungie’s creative aspect of Destiny will not be tampered with or manipulated by any sort, Sony as of current only owns the company and has no influence on game decisions besides funding and staff.

Sony, along with the band wagon of companies buying separate independent studios, has become a new normal and we should expect for Sony to continue acquiring new first party developers. Sony can grow and compete with other big companies such as, Microsoft and Tencent in order to keep the consumer reeled in.