Buying Bungie marks a strategic shift for Sony | Opinion
Rob Fahey
Contributing Editor
Friday 4th February 2022
Bungie
Sony Corporation
Sony Interactive Entertainment
The announcement that Sony is buying Bungie for $3.6 billion came in just under the wire and wrapped up a record-breaking month for acquisitions in the games industry.
It's not a deal remotely on the scale of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, of course, but it's further evidence of a major consolidation trend -- one that's likely to continue over the course of the year as Sony continues to expand its publishing and development operations.
It's tempting to consider this deal solely in the context of Sony's competition with Microsoft -- it's not a "response" to the ABK deal specifically, since Sony's negotiations with Bungie would already have been well underway before that deal was announced, but for several years there's been an overall sense of platform competition heating up and acquisitions being a key part of any effective strategy.
Looking at the Bungie deal solely in that context, however, risks missing the wider picture in terms of what this acquisition means for Sony's long-term strategy. Bungie isn't a standard studio acquisition along the lines of those Sony has made pretty regularly in the past decade; it's a company with a pretty significant multi-platform self-publishing capacity, a very popular and successful live service game that's been up and running for several years, and at least one more major title in the pipeline.
This acquisition represents a much more significant strategic shift for Sony than any prior studio acquisition
Sony has made it clear that it's not going to be stripping back any of that or turning Bungie into another of its (largely excellent) first-party studios. The
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