The Potential Excitement of Sony Acquiring Bungie and ‘Destiny 2

Destiny 2: Bungie Under Close Scrutiny

While Bungie’s recent struggles are well known, the result of over a hundred layoffs in late October, the more time goes on, the more dire the picture becomes of what’s going on inside the developer of Destiny 2.

This culminated in a report from IGN’s Rebekah Valentine which revealed, among other key issues like “soul-crushing” morale problems, there’s actually something even more intense potentially on the horizon. While Sony purchased Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022, the company has remained an independent subsidiary since then. However, if Bungie fails to meet certain financial targets, Sony has the power to step in, dissolve the current board, and assume direct control of the company itself. How wild is that?

Let’s talk through some scenarios about what it could mean if this trigger was indeed pulled.

Best Case Scenario – Better Leadership, Stronger Games

At this point I don’t think anyone is disputing that a main culprit of most things currently happening with Bungie is Bungie leadership itself.

The idea here is that this could be what the company and its games need. If Sony took out problematic leadership, they could elevate those within the company that could make better decisions, use some of their own talented in-house people, or hire others with live service/AAA experience.

In this case, Sony may agree to absorb some short term losses in order to get back on track with a new leadership team to carry Destiny 2 into its next era while continuing to develop and release other Bungie IP’s like Marathon.

Medium Case Scenario – Scale Reduction

While poor leadership decisions are indeed a huge part of what’s gone wrong here, there’s also a somewhat inescapable fact that a game like Destiny 2 is simply enormously expensive to make.

Read More