Something must be in the air - hot on the heels of news that Microsoft reached a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, Sony revealed today that they are buying Bungie for $3.6 Billion. The creators of the Halo and Destiny franchises will be allowed to retain creative freedoms and Sony has committed to keeping the studio's games multiplatform.
This move coming so quickly after the high-profile and much talked about Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard seems like a deliberate response of sorts, even though in reality these acquisition deals are handled confidentially and negotiated for long spans of time - so we're actually dealing with a rather scary coincidence.
As is always the case with these announcements, the companies in question are very happy with the deal and their top executives like publishing flowery letters about opportunity and potential and looking forward to the future and so forth. So what are the important facts here for fans?
It seems that, in practicality, very little will change. Unlike in the case of Microsoft, which committed only to honoring existing contracts with anything beyond those likely becoming exclusives and perhaps going on GamePass, Sony has given a long-term commitment to keeping titles multiplatform: We want the worlds we are creating to extend to anywhere people play games. We will continue to be self-published, creatively independent, and we will continue to drive one, unified Bungie community. Not only are Bungie titles, such as Destiny 2 and whatever else they have cooking behind close doors, staying multiplatform, the studio will also retain much of the freedom it possessed when it was a solo act. After its years-long association with Microsoft during the initial Halo years, this is definitely an interesting development - Bungie really gets around.