Yeah I think at most Bungie can be credibly accused of fumbling the ball a few times in the fourth quarter, up four touchdowns. Destiny has been a rousing success, but isn't anymore but....the crazy success is important context.
And we have no idea what his performance has been or what he's been pushing for or against.
The fumbles were occurring quite a bit earlier than the fourth quarter if Activision decided to cut ties with them
five years ago. That is less than eighteen months after Destiny 2 launch. At what point, pre-Microsoft (hell, even post-acquisition) did Activision strike you as a company that would leave easy money on the table? The Bungie / Activision pairing didn't even last five years beyond the retail release of the first Destiny. There is simply no way this franchise was delivering upon every expectation and Activision just suddenly decided, "nah, we're good". In a universe where Destiny actually lives up to expectations and meets Activision's goals, Bungie goes full circle and ends up with Microsoft as their publisher again. The difference this time is they'd still be independent, and still operating on a contract that permitted them to keep the Destiny IP upon divorce. So maybe they end up a Sony/PlayStation subsidiary anyway, but the knitting classes survive a bit longer with that pairing occurring slightly later in the actual universe.
lol
Well...not really.
I think regardless, if a publisher buys up a team and sees that someone can do a great job on management front for the whole company, it makes sense to promote them. Especially if Sony even bought Bungie for those types of talents in the first place.
Correct. In the tech world, this is known as an "acquihires". You get a group of rank and file employees who have an overall good track record historically (and, even know, Bungie would still fit the bill as a talented studio). You also get some talented management that may be brought into the fold of the parent corporation. If it hasn't happened already, you can most likely make a safe bet that higher ups in ChatGPT will be promoted to company wide executive positions within Microsoft. AI is is driving Microsoft's rapid uptick in market cap. You also sometimes get situations where Valve buys out a walking simulator developer who then go on to __________________? over a span of eight years. Not a joke, not an exaggeration.
This is not the news I wanted to hear. Destiny 2 has been the single scummiest gaas game imagineable. Their entire philosophy is making throwaway content as fast as possible and increasing price every year. Bungie has thrived on FOMO more than any other dev.
Sony is doubling down on their bad direction they took when they aquired Bungie. Bungie is the studio that VAULTED over $150 worth of content! They literally just took it away from players...some of the expansions they removed had been released less than 2 years prior! (Mars and Mercury). Fucking Sony.
The more I read about Destiny 2 post-Forsaken, the more happy I am that my co-op buddy (read: next door neighbor) and I jumped ship in early 2019 (hey, what else happened then?) and moved on to The Division. We both had it in the backlog, had a ton of fun playing through it, but didn't pick up the expansions since the sequel had already released. However this manages to keep happening with Ubisoft titles, we were able to pick up The Division 2 for $19.99 not even four months after release (amusingly, I had bought Far Cry New Dawn for $19.99
one month after release just a few months earlier, though that has it's own unique MTX headaches for something that is in no shape or a form a "live service" shooter). Played the hell out of it, and then the expansions hit fire sale pricing not long after on PSN, and we played the hell out of those. We did pretty much everything other than endlessly engaging in the monotony of
The Summit, which didn't seem to be worth the time. Never got into "Dark Zone" in either game either, but that was fine, I was already half a decade past the rampant stupidity of PvP modes at that point. TL;DR - it became my favorite co-op franchise ever, and was uncharacteristically non-abusive towards customers for a Ubisoft game. I have no idea why we don't have "The Division 3" by now. I don't know if Massive Entertainment is now a multi-team studio and it is in the oven, or someone made the catastrophic decision to focus on Avatar and Star Wars games instead. If that is the case, Ubisoft management problems are dramatically worse than even the eleven years spent shitting out "Skull & Bones" would indicate.
Makes sense. Bungie was hired to be MP overseer.
Now one of them is in charge of Sony GAAS kinds of shit. Expect more mtx and ways to get money from your wallet.
Sadly, this is very likely the case. At least until they discover there is a ceiling on how many "service" games a person can actually juggle at once. Whether you're a forum goer or Elon Musk, there is once inescapable reality: nobody can buy more time.