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[StreetsofBeige]

Give Parsons credit for selling at the high.

He timed it perfectly selling in early 2022 when interest rates hadnt shot up yet, and he knew Sony would be desperate for a shooter studio since MS bought Activision. Around that time, Sony was also buying up other GAAS studios so he knew Sony had bottomless pockets.

It's been 3.5 years since the buyout and all that Bungie has done is a couple Destiny 2 DLC packs and stolen asset Marathon. Which got delayed to probably sometime in Q1 2026. So by the time it comes out, it'll be 4 years of D2 DLC.

$3.6B for that. And $1.2B was for employee retention fees that arent getting back. What you got left is $2.4B of asset value, which by now is worth pennies on the dollar. Everything has zoomed down the toilet and they dont even have their leader anymore to boot.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

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.

More GAAS than that. But LOU Factions 2 I think could had been a hit. Ok, if it's true ND claimed they couldnt support it as they are doing Intergalactic, thats fine. It seemed they had something up and running. Just get more people or another studio to work on it. So what if it's not a ND project.

Factions 1 was supposed to be good from what I heard and people love gritty shooters. Seems like a good match. But I guess Sony brass thought it'd bomb or maybe ND had a firm grip on it and didnt want anyone else working on it. Who knows.

The money has always been there. Sony had $3.6B for Bungie + all the other GAAS studios they bought up and games worked on.

So they spread themselves with a wide net, but made the decision Factions 2 wasnt worth pursuing. But some reason Concord, Fairgames, and any other shooter they have/had in development were green lit.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

If they're happy with Destiny 2, why get rid of the studio head?

Pete Parsons was the CEO of Bungie.

Justin Truman was the Chief Development Officer of Destiny 2.

 

[LordCBH]

If they're happy with Destiny 2, why get rid of the studio head?

They can be happy at the mountains pulling in while also being unhappy about the reception to the new dlc and the plummeting daily play counts.

It won't stay as a top earner if they keep releasing updates that cause player counts to drop.

 

[Timberwolf25]

Pete Parsons was the CEO of Bungie.

Justin Truman was the Chief Development Officer of Destiny 2.

Sony letting go of the CEO, doesn't give me the vibe they were happy with a product under that CEO.
Rather, they're promoting someone within the company that they think will give them the control they want. If they were to bring someone from completely outside of Bungie, there would be even more backlash than they are already getting.

Good to have you back as noone can spin the GAAS push like you can.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

By now, Bungie should be integrated into PS Studios, and with a good cleanup of the studio's executives, it's a start.

This should've happened straight-away.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Sony letting go of the CEO, doesn't give me the vibe they were happy with a product under that CEO.
Rather, they're promoting someone within the company that they think will give them the control they want. If they were to bring someone from completely outside of Bungie, there would be even more backlash than they are already getting.

Good to have you back as noone can spin the GAAS push like you can.

Gamers need to stop thinking any of these companies care about "gamer backlash".

It's not real.

If Sony wanted to hire from outside of Bungie, they could have with no issues whatsoever. Instead, they hired a prominent developer inside the Destiny 2 team.

 

[Timberwolf25]

Gamers need to stop thinking any of these companies care about "gamer backlash".

It's not real.

If Sony wanted to hire from outside of Bungie, they could have with no issues whatsoever. Instead, they hired a prominent developer inside the Destiny 2 team.

Gamer backlash not real....that's some next level spin even from you.

Concord cancelled and refunded and Marathon delayed are just some recent examples of gamer backlash being very much real.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Sony doesnt need Pete Parsons anymore. Marathon is going to be either cancelled, or ship in the next 6 months with last minute tweaks and art changes. Are there more D2 DLC coming? Not sure. Maybe.

Either way, no need for Pete to be around anymore given the amount of work remaining and how things how tanked since acquisition.

Bungie will be disbanded when either D2 DLC or Marathon fizzles out as their last content worked on.

Unless Sony is suddenly Santa Claus, there is no way Bungie is getting green lit for any more big projects. Sony even transitioned some Bungie people into a new SIE studio to work on a new game instead of leaving it as a Bungie badged game. So you can see Sony brass has no confidence in giving Bungie more new projects. Just work on what you got in the hopper and that's it.

It's like a car plant. As soon as the current car models are done being made in 3 years, the plant shuts down. Any new car projects go to other plants.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Gamer backlash not real....that's some next level spin even from you.

Concord cancelled and refunded and Marathon delayed are just some recent examples of gamer backlash being very much real.

Concord would have flopped without the gamer backlash.

Marathon would have been delayed without the gamer backlash.

These companies look at real metrics to inform them, not what gamers say online.

I can assure you, nobody would care if PlayStation promoted somebody outside of Bungie to take Pete Parsons place. That's only something. 0000001 percent of gamers even knows about, much less cares about.

 

[diffusionx]

Give Parsons credit for selling at the high.

He timed it perfectly selling in early 2022 when interest rates hadnt shot up yet, and he knew Sony would be desperate for a shooter studio since MS bought Activision. Around that time, Sony was also buying up other GAAS studios so he knew Sony had bottomless pockets.

It's been 3.5 years since the buyout and all that Bungie has done is a couple Destiny 2 DLC packs and stolen asset Marathon. Which got delayed to probably sometime in Q1 2026. So by the time it comes out, it'll be 4 years of D2 DLC.

$3.6B for that. And $1.2B was for employee retention fees that arent getting back. What you got left is $2.4B of asset value, which by now is worth pennies on the dollar. Everything has zoomed down the toilet and they dont even have their leader anymore to boot.

Parsons took advantage of a desperate idiot (Jim Ryan) flailing about looking for anything to bolster their live service credentials and cash flow. Yea give him credit for that. I wonder if he knew that they were about to shit the bed with Destiny 2 (I forget what the expansion was) and Marathon was rudderless.

 

[diffusionx]

Concord would have flopped without the gamer backlash.

Marathon would have been delayed without the gamer backlash.

These companies look at real metrics to inform them, not what gamers say online.

I can assure you, nobody would care if PlayStation promoted somebody outside of Bungie to take Pete Parsons place. That's only something. 0000001 percent of gamers even knows about, much less cares about.

what "real metrics" did these experts miss that led to them thinking releasing Concord was a good idea. The game literally had no audience. I've never seen anything like it. Even gaas flops that have come out at least have some inkling of interest right away.

It's not like there weren't warning signs. The open beta was a dud.

Sometimes the people running these companies actually are that dumb.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Parsons took advantage of a desperate idiot (Jim Ryan) flailing about looking for anything to bolster their live service credentials and cash flow. Yea give him credit for that. I wonder if he knew that they were about to shit the bed with Destiny 2 (I forget what the expansion was) and Marathon was rudderless.

I dont think anyone saw it coming, that D2 would fall off a cliff and Marathon had stolen art. So I'll give him benefit of the doubt he didnt see those failing so hard.

 

[diffusionx]

I dont think anyone saw it coming, that D2 would fall off a cliff and Marathon had stolen art. So I'll give him benefit of the doubt he didnt see those failing so hard.

Well obviously Jimbo didn't, I am saying did Parsons see the storm clouds brewing.

 

[hemo memo]

Dude has been Bungie CEO for almost a decade and with Bungie for over two decades. What the hell is happening!

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

what "real metrics" did these experts miss that led to them thinking releasing Concord was a good idea.

Not sure, but their entire system is set up to course correct and learn from mistakes.

The "gamer outrage" people don't have the burden of learning.

 

[yurinka]

If they're happy with Destiny 2, why get rid of the studio head?

Maybe they didn't get rid of the studio head: maybe the studio lead wanted to sell the company and leave once his personal retention deal allowed him to do so. Something that is pretty common.

Or maybe got rid of him because despite Destiny 2 performing great and seeing good potential in Marathon, Destiny Rising, gummy bears or the WIP off-gaming adaptations of Bungie IPs weren't happy of parts related to his management:

• Destiny:
  • Maybe Lightfall wasn't as good as desired
  • The Final Shape got an important delay causing them a big miss on estimates
  • Maybe they expected some Destiny 3 or Destiny spinoffs progress they aren't achieving
  • Maybe they expected some Destiny off-gaming adaptations progress they aren't achieving
• Marathon:
  • Maybe had more delays they considered ok
  • The first closed alpha feedback wasn't as good feedback as desired even if they are confident that will improve it enough
• Incubation projects:
  • Maybe gummy bears looks promising but was having some management issues and wasn't originally considered to move it away from Bungie
  • Maybe expected good progress in additional incubation projects that didn't happen, and the other incubation projects weren't promising enough
• General management:
  • Maybe the Bungie results are great but not as good as in the goals that Bungie and Sony agreed in the acquisition, mostly caused due to delays
  • Maybe the amount of key staff that Sony was aiming to retain after the retention bonus period was higher than what they achieved when completed
  • Art plagiarism happened again, showing they didn't have enough control
  • Maybe his personal vision about Bungie's future doesn't agrees enough with the one SIE has for them, which pretty likely is the one they agreed in the acquisition
  • Despite SIE making a great progress in their GaaS push (4 big hits in 5 years, making 40% of their first party revenue) maybe mostly Bungie delays caused them to be a bit behind schedule/targets
  • Maybe management of projects and staff in Bungie was too messy compared to SIE standards even if got fixed/are fixing it
  • Maybe as part of the SIE cost reduction, streamlining and profitability optimization Hermen thought it's better to put Bungie just as another PlayStation Studios team to further reduce costs and Pete doesn't agree

There are tons of possible 'maybes' and 'ifs', none of them confirmed, but likely.

But well, having worked several years in big AAA game corportate I think most of these potential issues are relatively minor and common ones, not the ones that make them fire the CEO of a studio, and even less their most successful studio.

I think the most likely scenario is that he simply wanted to sell the company and leave after his retention period was complete to enjoy the money.

The karma of Japan Studio.

The restructuring of Japan Studio has been super successful:

• Their internal development team, leaded by who was the Japan Studio head before the restructuring, released their most successful internally developed game ever (greenlighted by Hermen Hulst and Jim Ryan), got super high reviews and won a ton of awards
• Their XDEV team has been very successful expanding to handle also non-Japanese Asian games, and did a great job releasing since the restructuring Death Stranding Director's Cut, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, Death Stranding 2, signed Physint and Marvel Tokon, and soon will release Lost Soul Aside and Convallaria
• Both halfs of Japan Studio got with the restructuring a new and bigger office in the same building where they were with the idea of helping them to grow in manpower, but Team Asobi decided to reduce or delay their growth plans and be more conservative