There was little doubt about it, but just in case Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that the purchase of Bungie valued at 3,600 million dollars has been completed. Starting today, the development team responsible for Destiny and Halo is officially part of PlayStation Studios, a family to which Bungie hopes to bring its expertise in games as a service, a sector in which Sony hopes to generously expand its representation.
Bungie is a subsidiary of Sony, but the purchase agreement gives the Bellevue development team a little different treatment than the rest. The company led by Pete Parsons is an independent and multiplatform subsidiary, which also maintains the ability to publish its own games. In other words, Bungie will not be limited to developing titles for PlayStation, something that will allow it to continue betting on the PC, a platform without which it is very difficult to be successful in the market of games as a service. Xbox can also be one of their targets.
For Kenichiro Yoshida, CEO of Sony, the purchase of Bungie “represents a great step forward to be more multiplatform” and hopes that it will serve as a “catalyst to improve the performance of our games as a service.” Sony is confident that Bungie’s help, expertise, and technology will allow it to release more than 10 games as a service before March 2026. There are four years and a lot of work ahead. One of these titles is a project from Bungie, which hopes to have new intellectual property ready before 2025.
The PlayStation Studios teams are widely known for their single-player games. For example, we have Insomniac Games (Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank), Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us), Guerrilla Games (Horizon, Killzone), Santa Monica Studio (God of War), and Sucker Punch Productions (Ghost of Tsushima). Sony doesn’t want to force these teams to develop games as a service, so buy those that can. Bungie is one of them, but there are others like Firewalk Studio and Haven Studios.
As a curiosity, a third of the 3,600 million dollars that Sony has paid for Bungie will go to the employees, who will receive their share as long as they do not leave the study.