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Sony buys 'Halo' creator Bungie as gaming fight heats up

14 Comments
By Glen Chapman

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© 2022 AFP

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14 Comments
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Japan overpaid for this acquisition once again. Honestly, they always overpay for everything!

I guess you missed the memo that Playstation HQ moved to west coast US years ago and is ran and managed by Jim Ryan. It's barely anything to do with Japan, it's an international company now.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Japanese game software industry is dying. For some reason, Japanese were left behind when game development went from being an art to an engineering.

Event PlayStation hardware since PS4 is no longer engineered in Japan; it is all engineered in the US by AMD and Sony US, chip manufactured in Taiwan, and assembled in China.

Not sure why Japanese are weak at software, when Japan's rivals China and Korea are not.

The most profitable company is Nintendo by far, the popular franchises being Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Mario and Zelda, all made in Japan. No Korean or Chinese software comes anywhere close to selling Nintendo numbers.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

They abandon Japan Studio only to go waste money on something like this.

Japan Studio was in the red for a decade, they paid their staff well and continued to pump money into but eventually enough is enough. If the people upset at the closure of Japan Studio had actually bought some of their games, (gravity daze, gravity rush, knack 2) then maybe it wouldn't have gone down but they didn't, nobody did.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I can sympathize with Sony that it is all that their pocket can afford.

Sony's on a 18 billion dollar spending spree.

Japanese game software industry is dying. For some reason, Japanese were left behind when game development went from being an art to an engineering.

Elden Ring(Hidetaka Miyazaki X George RR Martin), The game made by From Software(owned by Kadokawa) is the most anticipated game of the year(already topping Sales charts even before coming out). Animal Crossing is the best performing Game of last year, Pokemon Arceus is Crushing Sales records this year and so will Zelda Breadth of the wild 2 when it comes out, and Final fantasy XIV Endwalker was so popular and the demand was so HIGH that Square Enix is was forced to stop selling the (digital only) game for a while, Resident evil village is Doing Fantastic Numbers, Gran Turismo Gameplay reveal tomorrow which is expected to do great (most successful racing game franchise only behind Nintendo's Mario Cart), Tales of Arise winning Best RPG awards everywhere, I can go on and on and on.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

They abandon Japan Studio only to go waste money on something like this.

Couldn't be further from the truth, Japan Studio was the epitome of wasting money, managed by a bunch of corrupt old hags who succeeded in the PS2 era and think their old ways will continue to work in today's environment. They threw money at all kinds of stupid ideas and nothing worked, can you even name one game made by Japan Studio in the last 10 years that can even sniff the popularity of Destiny? hint: there is none :)

1 ( +2 / -1 )

maybe they should spend some more of that money getting the PS5 console out to stores.

Sorry but this is a ridiculous idea, they want to sell more PS5s more than anybody, but no one and no amount of money can resolve the worldwide chip shortage or make Covid disappear overnight.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Not the only businesses that are having to buy their supply chains.

The promise of not enforcing console exclusivity is interesting.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Seems Sony is getting serious into live services GAAS expertise - that's one thing that Sony isn't strong at

This sounds like a Minecraft type of deal. Bungie values its independence - that's why they negotiated a buyout from Microsoft in the first place. (But didn't MS retain a minority equity stake within Bungie when they split? So what happens to that now?)

Funnily, Sony and MS have now switched properties. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro used to be Sony's - now those are MS's. Bungie used to be MS's - now it's Sony's. And Activision and Bungie used to have a tie-up too

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2022-01-31-playstation-bungie-will-considerably-accelerate-our-journey-with-multiplatform-live-service-games

Interview with Jim Ryan and Bungie CEO Pete Parsons

Future Bungie releases to remain multiplatform as well

PlayStation interested in Bungie's live-service expertise

Ryan wants to go "beyond" consoles

'Aggressive roadmap with live services'

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Here's an idea that might increase their game position - maybe they should spend some more of that money getting the PS5 console out to stores. It was released 2 years ago and it is still almost impossible to get your hands on one.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

They abandon Japan Studio only to go waste money on something like this.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

The gaming ecosystem is getting worse and worse, if the trends continue there will no longer be autonomous developers and this will have an impact on the quality of the games.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Japan overpaid for this acquisition once again. Honestly, they always overpay for everything!

Bungie barely keeps Destiny 2 profitable in the past years. Under Activision Blizzard, Destiny was at least a good FPS game but it went down the drain after they left. Bungie does not have much-proven capability after leaving Microsoft and Activision. Sony bought something that they barely understood.

I can sympathize with Sony that it is all that their pocket can afford.

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

@Hiro

Japanese game software industry is dying. For some reason, Japanese were left behind when game development went from being an art to an engineering.

Event PlayStation hardware since PS4 is no longer engineered in Japan; it is all engineered in the US by AMD and Sony US, chip manufactured in Taiwan, and assembled in China.

Not sure why Japanese are weak at software, when Japan's rivals China and Korea are not.

-7 ( +1 / -8 )

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