Sony buys Bungie for £2.7 billion – Destiny 2 will not be exclusive

metro.co.uk:

Bungie is now the property of Sony, with plans for new games and what sounds like movie tie-ins and other multimedia projects.

As soon as Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion many people, including us, began worrying that it would inspire an ‘acquisition war’ with Sony and other companies, and here we are, not even two weeks later, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

Sony has announced that they’ve bought Halo and Destiny developer Bungie for $3.6 billion (£2.68 billion). The deal has apparently been in the works for five or six months, despite not a word of a rumour until now.

Despite what you’d assume this does not necessarily mean that Destiny 2 will become a PlayStation exclusive, with Sony promising that Bungie will remain multiformat and independent.

The official announcement is predictably short on specifics, but it seems Sony was primarily interested in Bungie’s expertise with online communities, with Bungie implying that they simply needed more funding and support for their future games.

This is essentially identical rhetorical to that from Activision Blizzard and while there’s nothing to stop any of the companies involved changing their tune further down the line, neither purchase seems as if it will be as straightforward as the Bethesda acquisition – where all their games quickly became Xbox exclusives.

According to a GamesIndustry.biz report, Bungie will be run as an ‘independent subsidiary’ with the ability ‘to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play’.

‘Our original universes have immense potential and, with SIE’s [Sony Interactive Entertainment] support, we will propel Bungie into becoming a global multimedia entertainment company dedicated to delivering on our creative