Well, there was some logic in Ryan's play.
Ryan continued the work on GaaS+PC expansion already started before him and doubled down on that, in the same way he also doubled down in all the other areas: non-GaaS and PS first party games, 2nd party deals, 3rd party deals, accesories, game subs, hardware and off-gaming adaptations, investments and acquisitions etc.
By the time Ryan wanted his own Fortnite,
Many of these GaaS started before Jim Ryan became CEO, and he said that they didn't expect them at all to be top tier successes like Fortnite at all, but instead that they were gong to make games of dfferent sizes and genres, to cover mainly niches/audiences of different sizes (some big, some small) where they didn't have first party presence.
And their one big GAAS success - Helldivers 2 -
So far they have four big GaaS successes: MLB, Gran Turismo 7, Destiny 2 and Helldivers 2. And three unsuccessful releases: Concord, Firewall Ultra and Midnight Murder Club.
In around a year from now they will have released released minimum 3 more: Marathon, Marvel Tokon, Convallaria. Horizon Online could be there or could be later than this, as seems to be the case of Faigame$ and gummy bears.
Thanks to Ryan, PS5 is gonna close out with a whimper, PS6 is gonna launch with a slate of cross-gen looking hand-me-downs, and Sony is left trying to clean up after Firewalk, Bungie, and Haven. Worst CEO they've ever had.
Thanks to Ryan PS5 is gonna close with Wolverine, Intergalactic, Cory's new IP, Team Asobi's next game, Firesprite's next game (Until Dawn 2?), plus with GaaS like Destiny, Helldivers, MLB, GT, Marathon, Tokon, gummy bears and more making a huge chunk money on top, as they already are.
PS6 pretty likely will start having during its first year or two with Bloodborne remake (followed by Bloodborne 2 around a year later), GT8, Horizon 3, next mainline GoW, Spider-Man 3, unannounced ND SP game (not TLOU3), next Media Molecule game and maybe Dark Outlaw's game, in addition to a couple cool games and some mediocre stuff from China/India Hero Project.
And all those Steam sales mean nothing since in 2024 it was reported Bungie was in the red.
It was reported they were in the red because they delayed both The Final Shape and Marathon that year, so they missed their target. But this doesn't mean Bungie made little money, just means money they though was going to be made there was going to be made the next fiscal year, when the Final Shape was going to be released.
40% of their first party revenue in the last quarter was from GaaS, and an important chunk of that is from Destiny 2. A chunk that will be bigger with the releases of Destiny Rising and Marathon (plus gummy bears somewhere in the future).
You keep bringing up Steam D2 top line sales charts in every thread trying to paint them as some kind of messiah in profits, but the studio is tanking hard.
It isn't tanking hard.
Multiple waves of layoffs,
They only had two: one according to Totoki planned by Bungie when they did the acquisition to reduce redundancies (normal stuff after a big acquisition), and the other one partly to relocate people to other SIE teams (as agreed in the acquisition) and partly to cut the fat as part of global Sony restructuring and specifically in Bungie to compensate the delays and improve profitability.
After the two restructurings Bungie had around 50 people more than when acquired, because before the layoffs they hired a lot of people, pretty likely mostly replacements for people who later were going to fire or move to other SIE teams.
Marathon delayed and plagiarism,
Delays are normal business in videogames, the plagiarism was a mistake they are fixing and even if shouldn't have happened isn't a big deal specally having detected it before release.
their latest D2 DLC did lousy,
We don't have enough data to know how it did perform, but obviously isn't a big expansion like the yearly ones they did, they now are splitting their yearly content in two mini expansions plus two additional big updates per year instead of in a single big expansion yearly release.
So obviously the impact of a single one won't be as big.
And that doesn't even include any loss of $1.2B of employee retention payouts or loss of brand/asset value as they've gone downhill since Sony bought them (that would be the other $2.4B). All the costs Bungie has tanked literally wiped out all H2 profit no problem.
Sony paid $2.4B to acquire the 100% of Bungie. And had additional $1.2B in bonuses, which partly isn't paid because being retention bonuses they are tied to conditions like staying in the company for a certain amount of years and to achieve certain results during these years.
Meaning, the Bungie workers included in the retention program who got fired didn't get at least part of their personal bonus. Same goes with performance related bonuses: having delayed TFS and Marathon very likely meant they didn't get the 100% of them.
The acquisition was paid when it was completed, and the bonuses have been paid until this year. Totoki said recent acquisiton related costs (not only the Bungie ones) eased out last year and that should be completed this one. Pretty likely the CEO left once the Bungie retention bonuses period ended.
This means that during this H2 there won't be any acquisition or acquisition related stuff to pay, and the Destiny 2 + Destiny Rising + Marathon releases will provide a nice profit.