Sony Completes Bungie Acquisition Deal
Sony has finalised the acquisition of Destiny developer Bungie after the deal was announced in January, shortly after Microsoft struck a deal to buy Activision Blizzard. The news was confirmed by Tweets from both Bungie and PlayStation Studios.
The agreement to acquire Bungie has closed. So now we can officially say… welcome to the PlayStation family, @Bungie! pic.twitter.com/x5jVmelaxl
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) July 15, 2022
Sony’s acquisition of Bungie, which cost almost $5.3 billion ($3.6 billion USD) was thought to be in response to the Microsoft acquisition, which is still under review over concerns it would create the beginnings of a video game developer monopoly.
Sony is working to establish their live game service to compete with Microsoft’s Xbox Game’s Pass, only recently releasing the new and improved PlayStation Plus service which gives users access to games for a subscription fee in the same way. Sony plan to invest 55% of the PlayStation budget on live service games by 2025, according to Sony CEO Jim Ryan.
The company plan to release 10 live service games before March 2026, and believe Bungie will play a vital role in achieving their live service growth.
Under the terms of the new deal, Bungie will become an independent subsidiary of Sony, but will still have creative control over it’s projects and operations, and will have no requirement to make any of their games PlayStation exclusives.