Sony’s Bungie acquisition is all about Fortnite

theverge.com:

Microsoft has Minecraft, Epic Games has Fortnite, and Sony now has Destiny. In a $3.6 billion deal, Sony is acquiring Bungie, the game studio famous for creating the Halo and Destiny universes. It’s a big deal, in a month already full of massive deals. It’s also backed by some equally big promises from Bungie about its independence, the future of Destiny, and commitments to multiplatform games.

Beyond Destiny, this deal reveals Sony’s ambition to compete with games like Fortnite alongside the steps it has been taking to bring the PlayStation brand to multiple platforms.

The deal itself is unusual. Bungie will maintain creative independence inside Sony, self-publishing its future games despite being owned 100 percent by Sony. Destiny 2 will remain multiplatform, so it’s not going to disappear from the Xbox and turn into a PlayStation exclusive. Bungie has even committed to keeping the game the same “no matter where you choose to play.” That likely means we won’t see exclusive Destiny strikes or weapons on PlayStation like we saw in the past, thanks to an Activision and Sony deal.

Bungie’s future games won’t be PlayStation exclusive, either. “We want the worlds we are creating to extend to anywhere people play games,” reads a vision blog post from Bungie’s Joe Blackburn and Justin Truman. So what is Sony paying $3.6 billion for, exactly?

You only have to look at Sony’s top 10 played PS5 games to see how important Destiny is to PlayStation. Destiny 2 is number six on the list, based on gameplay hours. It’s a list that includes Fortnite at the top and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in the second spot alongside the usual annual FIFA and NBA releases. Destiny 2 is still incredibly popular across Xbox, PC, and PlayStation,