Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal
Outside looking in, this feels like a far more valuable acquisition than Activision for $69B.Call of Duty is valuable, but Microsoft has already said they don't intend to remove it from PlayStation. That could change, but so could CoD's importance to the video gaming industry as a whole: its popularity has dropped with essentially every release since BLOPS2.Outside of CoD: AB is a shadow of its former self; IMO the second most valuable IP suite in the history of gaming (first: Nintendo), but years of failed projects, brain drain, and poor employee culture make acting on that IP difficult. Halo 4, 5, and Infinite have suggested that Xbox can keep dying IP on life support, but reclaiming the glory of Blizzard's past likely isn't in the cards, at least on the medium term.In comparison: Sony paid 20x less for Bungie. What they lack in variety of products, they make up for in, in my view, Potential. Destiny is a great franchise, with lots of fans. The team brings rock solid FPS dev & netcode experience (something Sony's first party studios are at a deficit for).This spectacularly echos previous acquisitions from both companies. Microsoft buys Halo, Gears, Bethesda, AB; all "glory day IP" acquisitions with demonstrated historical mega-success, but weaker more recent market success. Sony goes smaller; Bluepoint, Housemarque, and Bungie; but despite being smaller names, these companies have far more demonstrable ability to produce triple-A content, tomorrow. In other words; Microsoft is looking for name recognition to sell Game Pass; Sony is looking for talent, which the PlayStation name recognition and marketing machine can wring success out of.Most recent tactile example: Returnal was a massive success despite being in a very niche genre, which directly led to Housemarque's acquisition. Its hard to imagine it seeing the same success on Xbox, especially since Xbox did have an exclusive, in a different genre, but with rather similar vibes, release around the same time (The Medium). It was, to my eyes, a market failure (but, of course, I have no insider info).I don't like centralization. But it is interesting to see these two different strategies play out.