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Sony + Bungie Deal Could Prove Very Lucrative for Both Sides, Says Analyst

Lognor

Banned
You must have missed where I said they're probably working on Destiny 3 and a new IP.

And yes, they can make whatever they want, Bungie is an independent subsidiary run by its own board.
So what do you think happens when Bungie no longer wants to be stuck working on Destiny? Does Sony give it to another dev?

Sony paid that much money NOT for Destiny but for the expertise Bungie brings to live service games.

Read the article. Anyone with half a brain knew what this purchase was more about buying Bungie's talent than the Destiny IP.

Well that might not be the smartest thing since talent can, and will, leave. I know Sony is throwing a ton of money at folks to try to keep them, but they'll still lose talent. Those that have been there long enough have seen this before and might not want to stick around, even for a little bit of money thrown their way.
 
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So what do you think happens when Bungie no longer wants to be stuck working on Destiny? Does Sony give it to another dev?



Well that might not be the smartest thing since talent can, and will, leave. I know Sony is throwing a ton of money at folks to try to keep them, but they'll still lose talent. Those that have been there long enough have seen this before and might not want to stick around, even for a little bit of money thrown their way.

I think that becomes a conversation. Very rarely do you see Sony assign a franchise to a different studio just because they stop working on it. One of the few times we've seen that was with Sackboy Adventures and even that is a stretch.

Not sure there is much value in having a different studio manage Destiny.

During M&A you plan on losing a percentage of the employees, the plan is to minimize that over two years which is when people are most likely to leave and during that 2 year period to shore up losses through recruitment.

It isn't a little money... We're talking 1.2 billion dollars over 900 employees, with key employees getting the bulk of it.
 

Lognor

Banned
I think that becomes a conversation. Very rarely do you see Sony assign a franchise to a different studio just because they stop working on it. One of the few times we've seen that was with Sackboy Adventures and even that is a stretch.

Not sure there is much value in having a different studio manage Destiny.

During M&A you plan on losing a percentage of the employees, the plan is to minimize that over two years which is when people are most likely to leave and during that 2 year period to shore up losses through recruitment.

It isn't a little money... We're talking 1.2 billion dollars over 900 employees, with key employees getting the bulk of it.
I didn't realize it was that much. That breaks down to over $1M per employee. Obviously most devs will get nothing close to that and the bulk will be reserved for leadership. But fuck, if I was going to get $500k for sticking around for three years, I would probably do it. I have stock options with my current company that vest after three years but I only get like $20k, depending upon how the stock does. I didn't know video game development was so lucrative! (I know it's not).
 

saintjules

Member
U8JG01W.jpg

Every time I see or hear his name I think of this moment (timestamp):


 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Sadly not much can be done about that. A lot of the folks are still there though.
I won't call them "A lot". Just a few old remnants from their tech team that you can count with two hands and no one from the OG writing team. Forget Halo, heres an analysis on whats left of the Destiny 1 team.
 

oldergamer

Member
I won't call them "A lot". Just a few old remnants from their tech team that you can count with two hands and no one from the OG writing team. Forget Halo, heres an analysis on whats left of the Destiny 1 team.

You guys need to stop this shit listing off individuals that left developer x. You really have no clue what impact they made beyond job titles.

An 800 person studio will have a pretty regular turnover of employees.

This deal still seems really odd when sony had online experts in SOE and sold them off.

Also comparing them to other sony studios isnt worthwhile. Bungie doesn't make single player games anymore.
 
I didn't realize it was that much. That breaks down to over $1M per employee. Obviously most devs will get nothing close to that and the bulk will be reserved for leadership. But fuck, if I was going to get $500k for sticking around for three years, I would probably do it. I have stock options with my current company that vest after three years but I only get like $20k, depending upon how the stock does. I didn't know video game development was so lucrative! (I know it's not).

The easiest way to make big money in game development is to leave and create your own studio and sell that studio off.

The Deviation Games guys if they do as well as Respawn will probably make hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
You guys need to stop this shit listing off individuals that left developer x. You really have no clue what impact they made beyond job titles.

An 800 person studio will have a pretty regular turnover of employees.

This deal still seems really odd when sony had online experts in SOE and sold them off.

Also comparing them to other sony studios isnt worthwhile. Bungie doesn't make single player games anymore.

SOE never really lined up well in SIE. Everquest was also losing speed significantly. It was at a time when SOE was all about PC and SIE had no interest in it.
 
So what do you think happens when Bungie no longer wants to be stuck working on Destiny? Does Sony give it to another dev?



Well that might not be the smartest thing since talent can, and will, leave. I know Sony is throwing a ton of money at folks to try to keep them, but they'll still lose talent. Those that have been there long enough have seen this before and might not want to stick around, even for a little bit of money thrown their way.
Sony has their reasons for paying what they paid for this developer and they didn't pay that kind of money for Destiny. This was purely talent acquisition. Jim Ryan alluded to that when asked about the purchase. The reason for the purchase is also outlined in the article and many other articles that have been published since.
They've also gone out of their way to secure the talent via bonuses. Sony is lacking in the live services department and Bungie is the start of building out that area of their portfolio.
 

Sega Orphan

Banned
Jeff Ross specifically said on david jaffe's youtube channel that the pitch never went to sony and it was local management that wasn't interested in a sequel. Try again.
Jason S has shown how much Sony tells their smaller teams what they will and won't be doing. Jeff Ross backed up JSs article.
FyTqnJd.jpg
 

Sega Orphan

Banned
Days Gone director said that the Days Gone 2 pitch never was sent outside Bend because the studio management (the boss of the studio) blocked it, so the pitch never was sent from Bend to Sony/PS Studios to be greenlighted. Some time later Bend sent the pitch of a new IP (not Days Gone 2) to Sony/PS Studios and it got greenlighted.

Several months passed from the DG1 release to the greenlight of their next main project, the new IP. During this period, he said that as usual in AAA teams, the people who is free helps in other projects, from the same studio or from other studios. According to him during decades Bend and ND helped each other when they have some people free waiting for their next project, so they put this people helping in a project of the other studio.

Sony/PS Studios didn't kill Days Gone 2 because oficially never heard about it. And btw, it was only a pitch and not a game under development, because without greenlighting the pitch they can't start to develop it, so there is no game development to can.

JS was -again- lying and spreading FUD over Sony, as usual in Bloomberg. I assume that once they can wrong/false insider info and not double checking it a journalist can have a mistake. But with Bloomberg and JS happened so many times that I believe that they directly lie and spread FUD on purpose for clickbait and to hurt Sony.
Jeff Ross backed up JS. He said that Jason could be more honest about it than he can.
People will choose to believe what they want. Minds won't be changed on an internet forum.
Pg3DnEQ.jpg
 

Chronicle

Member
It's funny how everyone seems to think that how Sony spends its money, is somehow just some fleeting purchase. In this instance this guy thinks that it may just pay off. Let's ask Sony and Bungie if they think their purchase will be lucrative.
 

yurinka

Member
Jeff Ross backed up JS. He said that Jason could be more honest about it than he can.
People will choose to believe what they want. Minds won't be changed on an internet forum.
Pg3DnEQ.jpg

Jason S has shown how much Sony tells their smaller teams what they will and won't be doing. Jeff Ross backed up JSs article.

Joss said that because they backed a few things of the stuff JS said in the article (DG2 being blocked in 2019, what he highlights in the tweet plus that they did help ND in a couple of projects after DG and that now are working on a new IP), but he also says that to be polite don't throw JS under the bus because both him and John Garvin directly debunked many things of the article in the interview (like bad relationship between Bend and Sony or ND, Sony not giving them creative freedom, Sony not being supportive with them with DG or with new IPs or smaller teams who aren't the few super blockbusters, Sony canning DG2, them being feared of being absorved by ND... all these things were lies).

Plus there are other things (related to the new San Diego team and the TLOU remake or their relationship between ND and San Diego and the reason of why some of SD guys left) we already knew were fake because Mumbauer already told that story in a previous interview: they real story is that some Sony VASG guys made a new team on San Diego to work on their own projects instead of contining as a support studio, first pitched the idea of making cg movies using game assets for cinematics and was rejected, then they started an Uncharted 1 remake but changed their mind and decided to make a TLOU remake because it needed less changes in gameplay and design, and there was the opportunity to bundle it with TLOU2 PS5. It got greenlighted, started to work on it with ND providing material and overviewing and when Hermen got his current position didn't like the remake project, though they were spending too much budget on it and asked that Sony VASG to go back to their original role of being a support team during the completion of this project and asked ND folks to take the lead, with people they had free after TLOU2, to complete its development.

Mumbauer a few more left to create a new company where they would develop their original idea of making CG movies/tv shows of big game IPs using game assets for cinematics. Other people from that San Diego team were hired by Zenimax who did open a new studio in the San Diego and since the Sony San Diego teams were basically the only AAA teams around there, the Zenimax folks were very aggresive trying to hire them so poached some of them.

Later Hulst and Ryan debunked more things of the article like their supposed obsession with a blockbuster franchises and being focused on a few big western franchises (he said they are proud of their smaller and unique games like Astro, Dreams, Sackboy, Concrete Genie or Death Stranding) and that their over 25 games under development covered both big and small games, western and Japanese games, both single player and multiplayer games, and that around half of them are new IPs, that some of them are more mainstream while other ones more unique and weird.

Plus Hulst and Jimbo said that they continue believing in their Japanese teams and that both Team Asobi and their Japanese XDEV 2nd party publishing team (who after the restructuring published Death Stranding Director's Cut), the two halves of Japan Studios split with the restructuring, are now growing a lot like all the other internal teams, plus Jimbo also said they are working strengthening bonds with the Japanese 3rd parties (later they signed the deal with Kadokawa and CyGames and bought Lasengle, these could be some of them) and mentioned PS5 will have more exclusives than their previous consoles, so many of them can be Japanese (we saw some of them since then).

The part that Ross couldn't mention because back then he was under NDA, and debunked more recently in a separate interview is that who blocked the Days Gone 2 pitch wasn't blocked or canned Sony/PS Studios. It was the Bend studio management (person from Bend who is the boss of the studio) who didn't want to greenlight the Days Gone 2 pitch and send it to Sony, meaning that Bend never sent a DG2 pitch to Sony/PS Studios management to greenlight it. So Ross made a pitch but Days Gone 2 but they never started its production. After that Bend made a pitch of a new IP, sent it to Sony/PS Studios, got greenlighted and Hermen confirmed that now is under production.

Sony not only supports all their small teams (plus the bigger ones). They are all also growing all of them, all have or had during the last year or two a lot of open job positions and have been increasing their manpower. Media Molecule, Team Asobi, their XDEV Japanese team, Pixel Opus, Housemarque or if you consider Bend small then Bend too.
 
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I was gonna try Destiny for the first time. I downloaded it, then I deleted it and bought Horizon.

This might be a Sony Studio ill never play games from. I sense their game is grind/waste my time type of game. Let‘s see what their new ip will be that its worth over paying by at least a billion.
 
I was gonna try Destiny for the first time. I downloaded it, then I deleted it and bought Horizon.

This might be a Sony Studio ill never play games from. I sense their game is grind/waste my time type of game. Let‘s see what their new ip will be that its worth over paying by at least a billion.


Same.

It’s cool that sony own a dedicated shooter studio, especially one so prolific but i don’t really care for the MMO/Multiplayer shooter thing. I’m more excited for whatever Factions ends up as.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Did you actually just give me a reddit link as evidence?
Have no idea why anyone would look to reddit for this sort of stuff.
Was he wrong? I also made a similar list about OG Halo devs that are still in Bungie.
I didn't make this post in haste because I wanted to be completely sure I knew what I was talking about before discussing this topic. Here are the OG Halo devs that are still working for Bungie.
Jason Jones - Does he even make games anymore? After Halo 2 he stopped getting actively involved in game development and took the role of studio management. But in 2013 he scrapped the original version of Destiny because it was "too linear", made a team called "Iron Bar" lead by Christopher Barrett to release the Year 1 version of Destiny. After that he let others like Luke Smith lead the game and resigned himself from game development again.
Joseph Staten is the guy who wrote the story for Bungie Halo games and also the cinematic director. He has been the creative director for 343i since August last year.
He left Bungie because his version of Destiny was scrapped and instead we got a mess in 2014.

The new writers that were bought in after the original writing team left preferred Staten's original story and put it in the Grimoire Cards. A lot of the leaks from the original version of Destiny coincide with revelations in Shadowkeep, so the story is still being based on some lore blueprint left behind by Staten. The backstory of Savathun(antagonist of Witch Queen) was first provided in Book of Sorrows and it also hinted about "The Final Shape" which is supposed the last expansion of Destiny 2 and is supposedly where the original 10 year story ends.
Christopher Barrett - Not involved with Destiny since Rise of Iron. Has been working on a new IP.
Lars Bakken - Halo 3 Multiplayer Designer and Halo Reach Co-op lead
Tyson Green - aka Ferrex
Chris Butcher - Management and overseeing new IP
Ben Wallace - Seems to be working with Chris Butcher
Zach Russell - QA/Programming and Tech
These four joined after they left Microsoft and the OG trilogy, had minor roles in ODST/Reach but major roles later in Destiny
Alex Pfeiffer - Designer in Halo ODST/Reach. Now Design Lead.
Derek Carrol - Credited as a multiplayer designer in Halo Reach and "... And the Rest of the Bungie Crew" in ODST. Now Senior Designer.
Mark Noseworthy - Engineering Producer at Halo Reach, but was already Gameplay and Campaign preproducer in Destiny at the time. Now Vice President.
James Tsai - Designer of Firefight in Halo Reach. Now Director of Witch Queen.

These people were not Halo devs but still part of old Bungie studio.
Pete Parsons - Then Studio Head, now CEO. Had the same role that Bonnie Ross now does at 343i.
Luke Smith - Every Destiny fan knows this guy. He was originally a freelance writer for Kotaku and then a news editor at 1up.com. He was known for his lengthy article focusing on problems in Halo 2. He joined Bungie in 2007 for writing the Bungie.net content updates. He became a Design Lead in Destiny and Game Director in Destiny 2.
LinkedIn mentions 1154 people working in Bungie. So barely 1% of the OG Halo crew is still working in Destiny. Not a single person from the OG writing team has remained, although quite a few engineering/tech leads are here. Its very disingenuous to try to pretend you have the "original developers of Halo who launched the Xbox" without any of the recognizable names like Joseph Staten, Marcus Lehto, Marty O'Donell or Max Hoberman(I get Jason Jones, but he has resigned himself from game development anyway). This is the same as "Back 4 Blood - from the creators of Left 4 Dead". I see people in twitter or even here believing that the original creators of Halo are making the next big thing(some even think it would be as popular as GTA or Fortnite). I can't see Bungie making a new original sci fi IP with lore on par with Halo or Destiny without there original writing team. It would be embarrassing if their next IP is marketed as "from the creators of Halo", with Destiny it made sense since some were still around till Destiny 1 launch.
And people speculate about how Bungie will be handled comparing them with Rare, how not much of the OG Rare crew is still present but Bungie will be different. But they already are in a position worse than Rare hardly retaining anyone from the OG team.

Both in case of the reddit list of OG Destiny 1 team and mine, if you think anyone is wrong you can go through the credits in Halo 3/ODST and Reach yourself and tell me who is missing. Heck you can look up this stuff in Internet about what happened to the Halo and OG Destiny writing team.
Bungie's management rejected Joe Staten's original story for being linear, but the other writers put his story in the Grimoire Cards which could be read in Bungie.net. The rest of the crew from the writing team left Bungie shortly afterwards. Eventually Bungie embraced this "lore" as part of the Destiny story. Lots the stuff pertaining to current events in Destiny 2 and upcoming expansions were mentioned in Destiny 1. Savathtun aka Witch Queen's back story was in the Book of Sorrows Grimoire Card and it also mentioned Final Shape(which is also the supposed Final expansion in 2024/25).
destiny-2-five-faces.jpg

New-Threat-For-Destiny.jpg

This concept art was shown in GDC 2013.
mark-kolobaev-bungie-concept-artstation.jpg

This is from Art of Destiny Volume 1. Those veiled statues appeared in Shadowkeep. Also notice thoses pyramid ships in the background. "Veil" is the supposed darkness race(the fifth race in the first concept art).
vgRK4we.jpg
pyramids.jpg

db_destiny_198-5-1.jpg

Is this a reference to Lightfall? Or was it the travelers awakening at the end of Red War. Or was it the Season of Arrivals Live Event. Originally Beyond Light would have been Destiny 3 introducing Stasis aka Darkness sub class and Destiny 2 would not have any content vault. So Season of Arrivals should have been the final content update to Destiny 2.



So, the current story is based off the original 10 year story by Joe and the OG writing team. Whatever new writer the Bungie management hired they preferred the original story.
Others like Marcus Lehto and Marty O'Donell left because of Activision and Bungie management taking Actvision's side instead of the crew that gave us Halo. Watch Marty's interview with the youtuber Noodle - "Noodle Interviews @Martin O'Donnell - Composer and Audio Director for Halo & more!" and "The Crunch Culture Conundrum" especially the goose analogy.




The Goose Analogy at 10:23

In 2014 Martin O'Donnell gave a talk at the annual nordic game conference and he had much to say but what we're interested in today is his goose metaphor.
...
We all know how the fairy tale ends when people get greedy and the goose dies. The goose is the people and the egg is the games.
...
People don't want to actually kill the goose but they don't seem to have a problem kicking it in the stomach. And a goose that's been kicked in the stomach is not probably going to want to lay any more eggs. Doesn't even want to get out of bed.
...
One night i was having dinner with an Activision executive and he said "Hey, I've heard about this goose thing can you tell me the story about that". And so you know I had a couple glasses of wine and I started waxing poetically about the goose and the golden egg, and then he said "Well wow Marty that's a really good story, but you know sometimes there's nothing like a good foie gras(the liver of a cooked goose)".
You guys need to stop this shit listing off individuals that left developer x. You really have no clue what impact they made beyond job titles.

An 800 person studio will have a pretty regular turnover of employees.

This deal still seems really odd when sony had online experts in SOE and sold them off.

Also comparing them to other sony studios isnt worthwhile. Bungie doesn't make single player games anymore.
This was not a normal employee turn over. Most of the OG Halo devs left Bungie and severed all the ties they had with the studio. SIE should have made this a first party studio instead of allowing Bungie to manage themselves.
 
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