Sony to acquire Bungie for 3.6 billion

Sony Interactive Entertainment today has announced that they will be acquiring the Destiny studio Bungie for 3.6 billion, first reported by gamesindustry.biz.

This deal is an interesting kind as right off the gate they’ve announced that once the deal closes, Bungie will be under the PlayStation banner as “an independent subsidiary” of SIE run and that the studio will remain multiplatform. In a PlayStation Blog post announcing Bungie joining PlayStation, Bungie CEO Pete Persons says the company will “continue to independently publish and creatively develop our games. We will continue to drive one, unified Bungie community. Our games will continue to be where our community is, wherever they choose to play.”

Now the deal is still fresh and time will tell if they will remain a multiplatform studio once the ink dries and Bungie has settled in as PlayStation’s latest acquisition. 

Bungie is a well-known studio that was first acquired by Microsoft in June of 2000 to bring Halo as an exclusive title for the original Xbox’s launch in 2001. When Halo 3 launched in 2007, Bungie went independent once again, but the studio developed two more Halo titles (Halo 3: ODST, and Halo: Reach) for Microsoft. In 2010, Bungie then secured a 10-year deal with Activision Blizzard for their new IP, which eventually became Destiny that launched in 2014. 

Destiny 2 was then released in 2017.In 2019, the 10-year deal with Activision Blizzard was cut short, leaving Bungie independent once again and has been self-publishing the Destiny franchise until now.

The deal comes less than two weeks after Microsoft announced it was acquiring publisher Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion, bringing franchises such as Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, and more under the Xbox banner. 

In an interview with SIE head Jim Ryan with Gameindustry.biz, it looks like Sony is just starting as they have “many more moves to make”. This ends the first month of 2022, and it’s already a crazy year with just January alone.