Pete Parsons out as head of Bungie

StreetsofBeige said:
What happened was Destiny 2 was rocking so well they didn't want to make D3. If they did then D2 would fizzle out, but if they do marathon they could have a 1-2 punch covering two games and two revenue streams.

Fast forward to now and they didn't think D2 would fizzle out so bad and marathon being a stolen asset meh GAAS hardly anyone cared about.

There's always chance they also got D3 in the works they could show people as a trailer, but that game wouldn't come for probably 5 years. And no way Sony brass is waiting that long for results.
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They are built to be a live-service studio now, it's either Marathon or Destiny 3 or closure.

Marathon has to be somewhat successful. It has to. We know it won't be big, but that thing flopping will flop the studio.

I don't think Playstation believes that Destiny 3 could be big enough to invest hundreds of millions into at this point, Concord was a disaster and Bungie is fucking up. The model is not trustworthy and has burned them too much lately.
 
kpopSuperstar said:
They are built to be a live-service studio now, it's either Marathon or Destiny 3 or closure.

Marathon has to be somewhat successful. It has to. We know it won't be big, but that thing flopping will flop the studio.

I don't think Playstation believes that Destiny 3 could be big enough to invest hundreds of millions into at this point, Concord was a disaster and Bungie is fucking up. The model is not trustworthy and has burned them too much lately.
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They are stuck.

Even if they got some D3 info to share to keep the studio alive they couldn't even strategically do it. They still got D2 to support and Marathon isn't even out yet. So showing D3 wouldn't work.

The studio is so successful with Halo and Destiny I find it hard to believe how broke they seem to be. Lucky they got bought out by Sony but if those rumours were true the studio was crumbling and in the red when Sony bought them.

They dont got a big pot of money from their past successes?
 
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PatientGamer said:
Marathon will either be cancelled or will become Concord 2.0. Then Sony will shut down Bungie. Huge waste of money.
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The right thing to do is shut down marathon already given what happened.

But I think it was kept alive because there was enough bungie leadership on the board to keep it alive as well as it looks bad if a bungie game gets cancelled.

So bite bullet at some extended losses but save some face it at least launched. The last thing they want is it's cancelled and everyone piles on it was defeated due to plagiarism and couldnt recover.
 
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Punished Miku said:
Independence .... lightening

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If they reached the goals defined in the contract

Anyway, I was certain this CEO would leave, having come from Microsoft in 2002. There's no way a colleague of Phil Spencer understands games.
 
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Marathon was cancelled in the same meeting that Pete's stepping down was discussed. Now, Bungie is trying to devise a way to pivot without seeming totally inept.
 
You never know.

Bungie may negotiate with Sony to break away and be independent again. Then Bungie will do its best to partner up or get bought out by another big corporation. They done MS, Activision, Sony. Lots more big companies around to take them in.
 
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Mr Moose said:
Are they a bad studio or are they a badly managed studio?
Oh, hope they fired the pink haired weirdos.
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Considering the past reveal of the knitting classes, cooking classes, etc. - I'm going to go with badly managed. Sony's given them ample time to get their shit together and all that's happened is Destiny kept limping along and they revealed Marathon which didn't exactly set the world on fire (and was mired in controversy with things like the stolen art). Not surprising that the dude in charge of all that is out. Maybe things will actually improve now.
 
Hermen Hulst and Totoki are killing all the good will and legacy that playstation garnered throughout the years. Bring back Shuhei Yoshida and Shawn Layden.
 
laynelane said:
Considering the past reveal of the knitting classes, cooking classes, etc. - I'm going to go with badly managed. Sony's given them ample time to get their shit together and all that's happened is Destiny kept limping along and they revealed Marathon which didn't exactly set the world on fire (and was mired in controversy with things like the stolen art). Not surprising that the dude in charge of all that is out. Maybe things will actually improve now.
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I'd go with both.

Dumb ass managers who let things get out of hand. And equally dumb ass employees who let cash cow D2 sink and the whole Marathon debacle. As for extra curricular activities. Both sides are lame. One side for offering it. And the other wasting their time doing it and complaining when it was taken away when business started tanking.

Working at Bungie sounds like being in high school where half the people are childish. But at least they're teenagers having fun and you can always pick up the slack and pass class and graduate. You cant expect miracles from 15 year olds. Bungie seems like highly paid manchildren who care more about their collection of 25 cars or whether they get free food and drycleaning as their top priorities on their to-do list at work. And they even got caught cheating on a test just like a teenager with Marathon plagiarism.
 
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ByWatterson said:
I think we should stop and appreciate that Sony routinely fires or demotes poorly performing executives.
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I know you're being facetious, but it's sad that we live in an age where this is even a thing; i.e. where so many multibillion dollar companies keep hiring incompetent and clueless execs and then even promote them after a string of abject failures.
 
solidus12 said:
Hermen Hulst and Totoki are killing all the good will and legacy that playstation garnered throughout the years. Bring back Shuhei Yoshida and Shawn Layden.
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How can you gonna possibly come into a Bungie thread and start bitching about Hulst and Totoki-san as if it's even remotely relevant?

Bungie fucked up Bungie all by themselves.
 
Fake said:
Its over for Marathon. Probably cancelled.

Imagine for Sony to have Concord and Marathon cancelled at the same year generation?

Dude I can't see a massive disaster than this.


edit: I forgot FairGame$. Holy shit, this will hit hard.
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Marathon, Concord, and The Last of Us factions. Jim Ryan and Hulst are left looking like what they are: stupid idiots. XD

The karma of Japan Studio.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
I'd go with both.

Dumb ass managers who let things get out of hand. And equally dumb ass employees who let cash cow D2 sink and the whole Marathon debacle. As for extra curricular activities. Both sides are lame. One side for offering it. And the other wasting their time doing it and complaining when it was taken away when business started tanking.

Working at Bungie sounds like being in high school where half the people are childish. But at least they're teenagers having fun and you can always pick up the slack and pass class and graduate. You cant expect miracles from 15 year olds. Bungie seems like highly paid manchildren who care more about their collection of 25 cars or whether they get free food and drycleaning as their top priorities on their to-do list at work. And they even got caught cheating on a test just like a teenager with Marathon plagiarism.
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It was like the company was full of people who really believe the above principle doesn't apply to them. I say "was" because I suspect a lot of the ones who were more focused on free stuff as opposed to working have been shown the door or soon will be. It just took longer for the biggest problem (Parsons) to be corrected.
 
kazuyamishima said:
Have Sony even recoup at least 50% of the 3.6B spent from the Bungie Acquisition with revenue from Destiny 2?
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It's not all gloom and doom as people expect.

Latest expansion only got 1/3rd of the players previous expansions got.
But latest expansion also have 1/3rd of the content previous expansions got, and people still come back to it time and time again.

Destiny 2 is still this year's Top10 revenue generator on Steam, with more content in F2P than this franchise has ever pushed before in its history.
Destiny 3 will never be made, D2 is a gravy train nobody wanna scratch and start over. No way, too risky, too costly.
 
Bungie was hollowed out of all the talent one assumes is there when they see the Bungie logo. Now certainly they've got plenty of awesome guys, but I mean the birth givers. Halo and Destiny thinker uppers.

What did Sony see in the prepurchase evaluation that made them think it wouldn't go this way? I spent less than one hour watching a video essay on YouTube, and Sony's acquisition teams didn't come across the same information? Is the Destiny IP worth that much? I mean maybe it is if you're looking for a steady income stream and you think anyone who wears the embroidered logo is imbued with the power to create a third installment. You coulda had Bend or Santa Monica wear the shirts in secret for a lot less cash.
 
Parsons can use all his spare time now to clean and wax all the cars he bought while laying off around 25% of Bungie's staff.

Good riddance. He was at the top of the mismanagement pyramid.
 
TheThreadsThatBindUs said:
I know you're being facetious, but it's sad that we live in an age where this is even a thing; i.e. where so many multibillion dollar companies keep hiring incompetent and clueless execs and then even promote them after a string of abject failures.
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I'm not being facetious.

They clearly pushed out Jim Ryan (I was wrong about that it seems), demoted Herman Hulst, and now almost certainly told Pete Parsons to leave.

While Aaron Greenberg and Matt Booty keep getting promoted.
 
Clear said:
Also, I still think they had to have had a financial incentive to kill off Concord the way they did. Surely if they had that much invested in it, they'd have at least tried something... anything to try and salvage the situation!
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Absolutely, like, they must have been glad to have failed to that unthinkable degree, as it allowed them to kill off the whole thing with minor backlash while securing themselves a once-in-a-lifetime tax write-off.

At that point, I'm certain it must have been cheaper to start from zero somewhere else with another live-service bet than to rebuild Concord into something appealing.
 
Clear said:
Fixing the "stolen" assets in Marathon shouldn't be a problem; all they have to do is use stuff from WipeOut 3 instead. Nobody's gonna notice the difference!

Also, I still think they had to have had a financial incentive to kill off Concord the way they did. Surely if they had that much invested in it, they'd have at least tried something... anything to try and salvage the situation!

Shame we'll probably never know. It just seems odd that Sony pulled the plug after a month, while MS allowed Redfall to limp on for a year.

Honestly I'm pretty certain that Redfall lost MS way more money than Concord cost Sony.
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Surely, there's no way you think redfall was more of a loss leader than concord?

Way more money?

How could you possibly come to this conclusion?
 
Insanity how they sold to sony just at the right time before they fucked up soo much. 100m would be too much for this studio, a complete waste of money.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
You never know.

Bungie may negotiate with Sony to break away and be independent again. Then Bungie will do its best to partner up or get bought out by another big corporation. They done MS, Activision, Sony. Lots more big companies around to take them in.
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They need to partner up with Nintendo next. After that, they'll get bought by Tencent or Nexon and will just make shitty Gacha mobile games.
 
It was kinda telegraphed by Lin Tao in the financial results conference. Bungie is being absorbed into PlayStation Studios and this was basically supposed to happen in case of mismanagement so obviously this guy had to go which is a good thing.
 
KaiserBecks said:
Horizon: Marathon incoming!


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Ngl, my respect for him is growing almost every day. Standing up for his baby like that while effortlessly dominating the Gametrailers guy to the degree we are all witnessing is certainly some dedication. Would be ironic if he became the sole reason for me to try out the Horizon games one day.
 
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Kenneth Haight said:
Season 4 Office Tv GIF by The Office

It certainly could be but surely not…….

The bungie acquisition was always a bad fit and this just cements it. What a shitshow. Destiny looked so fucking cool way back at the conceptual stage. Bungie are just another studio that the original talent has now been scattered. The name is meaningless now.
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Yup. You can't put Bungie inside The Last of Us or God of War's budget. It's way different.
 
Justin Truman is the guy who gave the "Don't overdeliver" talk at GDC.

If they're promoting that guy, it means they're happy with Destiny 2.
 
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