When looking at Disney, I see a company that has bought a lot of deep IP catalogues. They've used that to really propel their future and get high-value talent that wants to work in those universes with a Disney-sized budget to tell their stories.
Activision Blizzard may have cost 20x more, but Activision is really profitable with a P/E ratio of 26 (at the $69B deal price). Microsoft's P/E is 33, Google's is 26, Apple's is 29, Amazon's is 58, and Netflix is 38 (even with the tumble in price). So Microsoft bought Activision relatively cheap compared to its earnings. Bungie is private so we don't really know what their finances are like. Activision's cheap price means that there isn't a lot of risk for Microsoft. Maybe you believe that Activision is about to crater and no one will want their games in the future. It's possible. It's also possible that everyone is going to get tired of the extensive IP catalogues that Disney has assembled. However, when the price is that reasonable, you don't need the same explosive growth to justify the investment.
So Microsoft bought a business that even if it just keeps performing as-usual will be a fine addition to Microsoft. It also has the potential to be huge for Microsoft with a deep IP catalogue, the potential for Xbox exclusives to help launch the next-gen Xbox when the time comes, the potential for cost savings with Azure infrastructure, and probably more that I'm not thinking of.
If Sony buys Bungie and just lets them do their thing, they might get some good games. But it seems like Microsoft wants to buy and pour some money in which seems like a recipe for bigger successes. We've seen it with some of Microsoft's recent purchases. They've poured money into GitHub and made it an even bigger platform. They've poured money into .NET Core and Xamarin/Mono to recapture developer mindshare. It seems like Microsoft is likely to take similar steps with their Activision purchase - and similar steps that Disney has taken with their IP catalogue.
It's possible that the small places Sony has bought have better potential, but Activision Blizard is a profitable company at a relatively cheap price which means that the purchase carries relatively low risk while still offering a lot of upside for Microsoft.
If you think Sony turned around and bought Bungie in the 2 weeks since the Acti-Blizz acquisition was announced, I dunno what to tell you.
Yes, the catalogue is deep, but much of it consists of dead horses that have been beaten for years or once-great icons that were mismanaged into relative irrelevance.
Budget constraints didn't seem to be what was holding them back before, and I can't see Microsoft suddenly managing the IP any better than Activision were (if anything, I can see it going downhill faster).
Not to mention these are lore-rich well-known universes and could result in multimedia franchises
Those along with not clogging up the candy crush money printer will get them plenty of runway to really dig in and fix the culture.
It is sort of like if Valve actually made Half Life 3 now, most gamers don't even know what Half Life is, let alone why Half Life 3 would be such a big deal outside of being a meme.
Through that lense ActiBlizz is a great buy. Candy Crush and COD and Warcraft.
You don't need the top seller if your goal is to keep customers above the subscription cancellation threshold.
Video games are very distributed. Its the work of a system of people, from high level concept artists building a shared mindspace for how the game should feel, to writers, to gameplay programmers, low level engine developers making the previously impossible possible, and at the bleeding edge sometimes even hardware engineers. All integral to the process.
Very, very rarely a "10x leader" will emerge from the industry. Someone like Chris Metzen of Blizzard, or Martin O'Donnell of Bungie, or John Carmack, Tim Sweeny, Peter Molyneux (for all his flaws lol) or Todd Howard, Miyamoto, or Kojima.
But its nowhere near the level of impact on the final product that a talented director or writer of a movie can bring to the table. Even as recently as the Bobba Fett series, and Tik Tok blowing up about the two episodes Bryce Dallas Howard directed being significantly better than the rest of the series. That just doesn't happen in games. Games don't "bring in" "guest directors" to... produce... one installment? One segment of the overall game? Its just nonsense. Moreover, every great leader I listed above, eventually, produces something kinda shit. Even the stuff they're known for, oftentimes they'd say that they received far more credit than they deserve; that the team deserves far more than they get.
The broader conclusion being: it takes some literal magic to produce great games. Ask anyone in the industry and they'll all agree: its a miracle games ever ship, let alone that some stand among the highest tier of art humanity has ever made. You can't just buy cool IP, like a sugar trap to attract talent like they're flies. On the contrary, the one model which does seem to work, is the literal antithesis of the Disney model: teams which work together for abnormally long periods of time (5+ years) trend toward producing fantastic stuff, eventually.
Though to be clear: there's something about that "Disney of Games" idea that I find fascinating as an explanation for Microsoft's behavior. And while I disagree with the assertion that it will work, I can't disagree with the guess that its a model Xbox has used, internally, to talk about their growing portfolio.
One thing I'd add, in short: Its easier to 10x a small company than a large company. Applied here; Destiny is a fantastic launchpad, but many in the community would agree that its potential was always short of being fully realized. With additional funding, talent, and leadership; its reasonable to conclude that PlayStation could be a very positive force on the game (for everyone who isn't an Xbox gamer, of course, sadly). There's a lot of room to improve this product, which is already relatively good; many untapped players.
In comparison, AB is something of a... well, I don't want to say "disaster", because there are some great parts to that company, but they're having major issues. Even putting the sexual assault scandal aside: There's much less of a launchpad for Xbox to start from and add value. We're talking ten thousand employees, across dozens of product lines, and maybe three of them have a strong future outlook. They're looking at a years-long phase of cleaning shop, reorganizing, firing, hiring, planning new projects, cancelling bad ones, it's going to be dirty, and in none of that is "releasing awesome games to players". But, maybe there's a light at the end; I really, really hope so, and believe there will be.
And all of this is if the acquisition goes through. There's a real possibility it'll be shut down. Sony "sneaking in" this much smaller Bungie acquisition at the same time basically guarantees it'll go through; the USG/EU won't block both. And frankly, I don't believe they'll block either, but its still a possibility.
Beyond the fact that this has supposedly been in the works for months, so not exactly a panic, Bungie has a new IP in development, and has announced their plan to expand Destiny beyond video games, to movies, books, and other media. So while you're right in the sense that today, Bungie only has Destiny, they've already been working on making that not true, even if they're not there just yet.
That said, I've never played the Microsoft version of Minecraft because it seems strictly worse, and also unmoddable.
I disagree. Destiny may have once had potential, but Bungie is a studio that continually shoots itself in the foot. Just like with Halo, they threw out years of work for the first Destiny and essentially stitched together a frankenstein of the parts to ship on time. It's why the story has never made sense, even as they try to retcon various pieces to fit into a much longer narrative.
The game has also lost some of its early "looter shooter with friends" charm and become a grindfest that feels like a job at times, with content that is sunset only 2-3 years after it is sold to consumers. Destiny 2 is also extremely hostile to new players, bombarding them with dozens of vendors, currencies, and no clear sense of where to start and how to begin grokking the story. The original campaign has been sunset so if you never played before, you will be missing the equivalent of the first movie of a trilogy in terms of plot and characters.
My hope for this acquisition is that it lets them course correct the design of whatever they do next because I feel that Destiny 2 is in decline.
Destiny doesn't just feel like a job, in some sense it IS a job.
I thought they did a good job rehabilitating the first game from the sorry shape it shipped in (see: the economics of the loot cave). It is a mountain which can be climbed, and it is fun to do so. (There is also a literal mountain to climb)
Well, now the Bungie of yore is thoroughly dead. All of the faces from the Halo Vid Docs have moved on. What's left is a husk. Sony bought a hope. They also prevented Microsoft and Bungie from teaming up again. Perhaps they fear that duo. I wish them the best.
This is an interesting thought. The 30th anniversary *paid* content was a bit lighter than anticipated, however the Free To Play content that came alongside it was fantastic. Perhaps I'm just used to seeing phrases like 'worse monetization' from the consumers perspective rather than the business's, but most of the community reactions from the 30th were positive, at least in regards to what was paid and what wasn't.
Personally I've gotten far more value than I've paid for out of everything I've ever bought in Destiny, including the 30th pack. I've even bought a few expansions twice. That said we are lucky enough to be in tech. And there were a lot of people complaining about the 30th pack before it launched, though those seem to have quieted down by now.
1. dares of eternity
2. Xûr bounties and rewards
3. 11 weapons
Pay $25:
1. forerunner (exotic sidearm)
2. grasp of avarice (dungeon)
3. ship / sparrow
4. four emotes
5. two full sets of universal ornaments
6. one extra helmet ornament
7. Gjallerhorn
All cosmetics except for Forerunner (which has already dropped to #71 in Trials and has no pve relevance) and the Dungeon, which is the one most people were up in arms about.
EDIT: oh, and edited above: I forgot about Gjallerhorn, haha. It requires the dungeon and so therefore is for pay too. It's very good but still not clearly meta, we'll see if rockets are great next season like many people suspect.
Pathways into Darkness and Marathon forever.
I hear they started making non-Macintosh games recently?
In the last 12 months narrative team of Destiny 2 have REALLY knocked it out of the park, with the seasonal plot actually making sense and having some interesting activities (like Battlegrounds). Some significant improvements in QoL too.
While there definitely gaps as you say - the New Light experience in particular needs some serious work - so long as Sony lets the team continue on its current trajectory, there may be hope.
| 860,000 players played Destiny 2 yesterday, at a slow point in a season about to end later this month
| • 275,000 on Xbox | • 355,000 on PlayStation | • 224,000 on Steam | • 5,390 on Stadia
Destiny is not small.
There are maybe a dozen or so western service-games with 1M+ regular active players.
* Microsoft bought maybe four with the AB acquisition (CoD, Hearthstone, WoW, Overwatch, maybe D3 but probably not), and had one coming in (Minecraft. H:I qualifies for now, but its new and it remains to be seen if it has staying power).
* Valve owns two (CSGO, Dota2). They're extremely not for sale.
* Riot owns at least two (LoL/Valorant). Also not for sale; owned by Tencent.
* EA has a couple (Apex, maybe their sports titles as well). Likely out of reach for anyone to acquire.
* Epic, of course, has Fortnite.
* Rockstar has GTA5. T2 is probably on the acquisition block; expect that next, but who the buyer will be is anyone's guess. My pocket prediction is actually Epic.
To clarify: The reason why I narrowed that list to just western companies is because of the difficulty in both determining metrics for eastern games, and the difficulty in acquiring them. Chinese companies simply won't be acquired, and something many may not know: its very, very difficult for non-japanese companies to acquire japanese companies. There's a lot of government rules restricting it. PUBG is South Korean though, so it may qualify for the list; less familiar with SK's stance on western acquisitions.
Tangential: this is why you should laugh anyone out of the room who suggests Microsoft will buy FromSoftware. From is a fascinatingly weird company; owned by a Japanese multinational that mostly publishes manga & tabletop roleplaying games, to my knowledge From is Kadokawa's only video game subsidiary. On the one hand, they're a perfect acquisition for Sony given that Sony is Japanese and From is a weird company among Kadokawa's MO. On the other hand, its a massive profit center that I'm certain their overlords leave to their own devices.
That's essentially everything in the current gaming landscape. Once its all laid out, it should be obvious how valuable Destiny is to Sony: PlayStation isn't on that list. They do own something like 3-5% of Epic, but beyond that, they're seeing Microsoft make heavy investments in both discrete releases & ongoing service games. Sony has discrete releases MASTERED; they're the king, up there with Nintendo. But they don't have service games. To get a service game like Destiny, in a super popular genre (looter shooter RPG), for a couple billion, is a steal; even moreso that it gives them a card to play, maybe first, maybe second, if Microsoft ever moves to remove Call of Duty from PlayStation; its nuclear peace. Remember: Sony collects 30% of every CoD transaction on PlayStation. View the acquisition through this lens, and it adds further value to the transaction: if the threat of removing Destiny from Xbox, and thus Xbox's 30% cut of transactions there, keeps CoD on PlayStation a bit longer, it helps pay for itself.
They haven't said that. They have said they will honor their existing contracts [1]. That's not permanent guarantee. I'm not saying they'll pull it as soon as they can but it gives them a lot of power.
I'm not sure you realize just how big the CoD franchise is. It pulls in billions of dollars every year by itself.
As for Blizzard, yes the company has seen better days but their IP is still valuable. Diablo 4 whenever it comes out will sell a ton of copies.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/20/22892860/sony-microsoft-a...
Not really. Destiny has a smaller audience than CoD, and Activision Blizzard is a huge purchase with lots a of valuable IPs that go beyond CoD and can still grow (Bungie, OTOH, currently only has Destiny in it's catalog).
Bungie revenue was estimated around $300 million for 2019 vs. $6,5b for Activision Blizzard, so price seems to be in line for both purchases, around 8x annual rev.
Keep in mind Microsoft has bought ton of small studios as well! (Rare, Playground).
Returnal is a good title, but far from being a success by AAA standards (last time they reported sales of the game, in June 2021. it was 560.000 copies). I think part of the aura of success comes from being one of the very few exclusive titles created specifically for the PS5.
Compare that to Rift Apart, which last I heard is more in the 1-2M sales range. Insomniac is a true triple-A studio, with more like 400-500 employees plus the full development support of PSS's shared resources. Ratchet & Clank is a more broadly known franchise, in a genre and aesthetic that is more age and demographic accessible.
Additionally, while this would equally affect Returnal & Rift Apart; PS5 shortages do dampen all PS5 exclusive game sales compared to more broadly available titles.
Within that context, it's clear to me that Returnal was a tremendous success. Not a Triple-A success, but its not all about raw sales at the end of the day. Cost to produce also needs to be considered.
To be clear: I absolutely believe Xbox isn't just "all triple-A all the time". They have the triple-A teams. They have the smaller teams (Maybe not Rare/Playground as they're huge nowadays, but: Ninja Theory, Compulsion, Double Fine, World's Edge, maybe even Obsidian, plus their exclusivity deals with Moon and Asobo). Its more-so a discussion about their recent acquisitions strategy.
Strongly disagree. Bungie have one IP. while AB have many well know IPs. Blizzard proven, you can make a new game out of old IP. Warcraft is used to make Hearthstone the card game.
you are comparing one franchise IP to multiple franchise IPs and claiming Bungie is a better deal. that just stretching it.
Okay, technically Bungie was working on a RTS game called Halo when MS bought them, but it was after the purchase it shifted genres and found its groove.
In other words, this "echo" isn't really what you are saying.
Second: Do you recall the keynote where Bungie unveiled Halo for the first time... at MacWorld 1999? For reference, Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000. I've literally never heard the assertion that Halo was intended to be an RTS; my understanding is that it was originally going to be a third person FPS, as the 1999 MacWorld trailer suggests, but was changed to a first person FPS when Microsoft purchased them.
The earliest versions were basically built on top of Myth's engine, Bungie's RTS. It then eventually became a third person shooter, and it was such at the MacWorld announcement. It did turn into an FPS after the Microsoft acquisition.
(I will look forward to people who were screaming that console makers mustn't be allowed to buy game authors and studios seamlessly turn a 180 if it favours their tribe.)
Myth and Marathon were experiences in storytelling for me however. I even have a copy of the GURPS Myth roleplaying guide sitting on my bookshelf behind me that goes more into the lore of the Myth universe.
And with this recent 30th anniversary event, it also seems like they kind of think of all of their various older IPs to be in a multiverse of some sort.
(And Pathways into Darkness was also an FPS, just like those three Marathon games. Bungie has been doing FPSes for a long time, 100% agree with you.)
It may have been an RTS initially, but when Microsoft bought Bungie, it was already "Combat Evolved" and near release.
A lot of development happened right before Combat Evolved got released due to Microsoft injecting a lot of money. It wasn't just an Xbox port of an already finished game. Look at the E3 2000 trailer which is pretty much what has been shown at Macworld the year before. Combat Evolved looked quite different when it came out a year later. Note that Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000.
I loved Myth and Myth II. A space-based one would have been great.
I don't understand the timeline, though, as the videos shown at MacWorld in 1999 (before Microsoft), show Halo as a first-person shooter. The video is linked above. I think it was a FPS long before Microsoft was interested. I think Microsoft bought it specifically because of the FPS game.
But according to https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwqjg3/the-complete-untold-h...
It was already an FPS by 1998, 2 years before Microsoft was involved, and a year before the video shown above.
They started as an RTS, then decided it was way too much fun to actually drive the vehicles, and the rest is history.
Microsoft definitely helped with the development, but Microsoft bought a FPS game, not an RTS one.
I am not so sure. At least not for Bungie. I haven't enjoyed Destiny at all. Where on the other side, Arkane's Dishonored and Prey are quite good. So are id Software's Doom, Doom Eternal, and Wolfenstein. Fallout 4 was okay as well.
id definitely puts out super solid stuff, consistently. Arkane is also in that bucket (Deathloop is the better example to judge recent efficacy of the team, not Dishonored/Prey. And its great). But, that is counterbalanced by... Fallout 76? Warcraft 3 Reforged? The state of WoW, Overwatch, and Heroes?
Xbox's acquisitions are a semitruck full of companies. The good parts of that truck are good. The bad parts are... quite bad. But the bad parts are built on really strong IP, which carried its own high price tag. So the question becomes; they'll definitely get value out of Arkane, id, and CoD, zero question there; but will they get value out of the rest of the ~$76B combined they spent, when so much of it is in glory-day IPs and not in teams, employed today, that can execute on that IP to deliver awesome content (no disrespect intended to the teams who do work on that content today; but reality is in the metrics, revenue, etc)?
Comparatively: Microsoft bought a semi-truck, Sony bought a Miata. It's not the fastest car out there. It's not for everyone. But it has its users and there's no question as to Mazda's ability to put out another stellar model, nor question around whether customers will buy it. Plus: very affordable. Ok, that's a bad analogy.
This sounds like a long time, but it's not in game development. Putting out a solid title requires multiple years of development.
> Deathloop is the better example to judge recent efficacy of the team
Deathloop isn't on par with Arkane's previous games. It didn't even sell that well. They put it on sale a few weeks after launch to issue damage control.
Maybe printing free revenue from the franchise is more valuable than printing revenue with high overhead console sales :)
And Sony's move is simply a defense against that.
So far while game pass seems cool it's not really panning out monetarily for me.
Other than these big studios that MS built, the rest of the game pass catalog would be easy for sony to pick up on their own game pass.
I'll also note that no one seems to be talking about nintendo, who also has a great stable of titles, needs to take on game pass. Sony and Nintendo's exclusive catalogs are in the same ballpark (if very different).
Microsoft also loses out on the console money, since why would I buy a console when I have this gaming pc that's much better? So makes sense for me to just buy the PC games and a PS5, that and my switch has me covered.
Which is why microsoft spent $100 billion on studios this year. Zenimax and AB consistently put out hugely popular games, and I expect microsoft will continue buying.
I've played 1 game from Zenni in the last 10 years for more than a few minutes (deathloop), (tried their others no interest, hate stealth, hate super long games). One from blizzard (overwatch this one got me, like 900 hours), one from activision (warzone for like 3 days). So that stable of games wouldn't have me specifically retaining game pass, I'd just buy them. Also Halo wants to double dip you with the game and the battle pass even if you have ultimate.
I think Zenni was a much better acquisition than AB. Blizzard has some great IP, they don't have the talent to make it go anymore. Activision has what, COD and a ton of old IP they weren't doing anything with? Really Microsoft will need to take one of their solid studios that is bad at IP and good at execution give them something like Starcraft, but I don't even know how deep their stable of developers without projects is right now.
But also I realized a while ago, I have way less time than games to play. I have an unlimited 2k entitlement for instance and barely play those games (didn't like civ, not into sports games). And I do hate subscriptions that remind me constantly what I'm paying for them that I know I'm not using.
Anyway, my $0.02.
Besides, MS needs content for its subscription gaming service. It’s not like consoles themselves are profitable. They are just a means to deliver games to users.
- social manipulation from fake players to employ peer pressure, membership, and others to extract revenues
- employees masquerading as players to stir up conflict that gets people to pay money to support the "guild war"
- employees masquerading as players that target free or low revenue players to get them to pay to survive/not be harassed.
- have outright gambling with attendant neurologically tuned payouts like slot machines
All told these are "games" in the sense that blackjack and poker and other gambling pursuits that prey on neurological reward systems are "games". Except they lump on social networking manipulation and group dynamics to further revenue extraction.
And they aren't nearly regulated to the degree that casino games are.
The games I've described are Machine Zone and other of their ilk that are the worst offenders, but their revenue has forced practically all vendors of video entertainment to consider using their tactics to "enhance shareholder value".
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.