Rumor: Sony Sees Bungie As “Failed Investment”, Sony Takeover Incoming

gameranx.com:

A new rumor is going around about internal struggles ongoing between Bungie and Sony.

As shared on reddit by user UltraPlayGaming, a Destiny 2 content creator called Aztecross claims to have received an anonymous email talking about these issues. We will share a summary and our own commentary, but you will also be able to read the full message below.

But to quote the letter, Sony apparently already sees Bungie as a ‘failed investment.’ To put that in context, Sony acquired Bungie in early 2022, to the tune of $ 3.6 billion. Sony was very public about their intent to make money out of the Destiny IP, but they also reportedly wanted to make use of Bungie’s expertise to teach them to make live service games.

As things stand, Naughty Dog have revealed they cancelled their live service title, The Last Of Us Online. We also learned because of the Rhysida ransomware leak that Insomniac Games cancelled a potential live service game, a multiplayer online title called Spider-Man: The Great Web. Sony has cancelled more of their live service projects, and the only one that has released by 2024, Helldivers 2, was a smaller scale project that wasn’t designed to make the kind of money that Destiny does.

We have also learned about Bungie’s internal issues, which we don’t want to go into detail here anymore. But it’s relevant to point out here that Bungie management was rumored to havemade a series of self-sabotaging decisions, because they feared Sony taking over from them.

So, obviously, Sony does want to take over right now. The mood is apparently Sony management believes the rank and file staff are not to blame, but their leadership is. But Sony’s US and Japanese arms don’t agree on the course of action to take.

One internal leader in the US, possibly someone who isn’t a public facing figure for PlayStation, wants to take over from Bungie’s ‘gluttonous executives to right the ship. Sony in Japan wants to gut Bungie’s teams, even the ones working on future projects.

This letter