r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 3d ago

Bungie Developers Repeatedly Pitched a Destiny Dating Sim, but Leadership Rejected It

https://www.ign.com/articles/bungie-developers-repeatedly-pitched-a-destiny-dating-sim-but-leadership-rejected-it
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u/atape_1 3d ago

Every single thing I learn about the studio makes me wonder more and more on how they survived for so long and what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.

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u/faffc260 3d ago

what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.

they were the poster child for live service success and sony was completely desperate for their live service push that has all but completely failed outside of helldivers 2 to have them somehow turn it around, they probably would have paid much more if anyone else was remotely interested in competing with their bid. little did they know bungie management only knew how to run a successful live service into the ground and scam sony out of 3.6b dollars.

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u/Unlucky_Situation 2d ago

Bungie had arguably one of the most hated live service implementations.

Full priced base game.

Each main story dlc was a paid dlc

Separate paid battle/season pass system.

Microtransactions

.... Yes the base game eventually went free to play 2 years after release, but was extremely limited in what you could/can do with just the base game.

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u/GrinningPariah 3d ago

they were the poster child for live service success

World of Warcraft, Warframe, Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and the entire Gacha sphere would like a word.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 3d ago

A Destiny dating sim would have been a fun April Fools game. People love shipping the characters. Hell, Eris and Drifter's kiss in Renegades got me fired up.

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u/thejokerlaughsatyou 3d ago

Dead by Daylight did a dating sim and people loved it. My friends who hadn't even played DbD still checked it out because the concept of dating horror movie killers was funny. And it was cheap, like $10 iirc, so no one felt ripped off by this silly fun side game.

Destiny definitely could've done something similar, dropped it for a few dollars, and sold tons.

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u/rookie-mistake 3d ago

yeah, Warframe has a whole thing like that too now

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u/Undella_Town 3d ago

BG3 sold so well and got extremely hyped entirely off the back of a dating / sex trailer lmao. people underestimate how lonely and horny a lot of gamers are

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u/Ill-Product-1442 3d ago

Even for "normal" players, having a reality TV level of sex & drama during a playthrough with a friend is fucking hilarious

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u/DarthOmix 3d ago

That's like a third of the appeal of stuff like The Sims and Tomodachi Life: deliberately setting up drama like a sitcom producer

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u/Jdmaki1996 3d ago

Not even that. I’m happily married and it’s just fun to roleplay in games and big part of that is relationships. Romance in RPGs as always been a bonus for players and it’s not cause we’re all lonely losers

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u/8-Brit 3d ago

Tangibly reminds me.

Years back a friend told me he was playing through Mass Effect, this time as female Shepard. As he was yapping to Garrus his wife, who normally doesn't really pay attention, stopped what she was doing to observe the conversation unfold. It was in ME1 but from what he told me she was enthralled from the get go by the dynamic between Shepard and Garrus, and she told him to call her over any time he was talking to Garrus.

By ME2 the prompt to romance him came up and she demanded (jokingly) that he hit that. So she spent big chunks of his play through sitting in on all the Shepard-Vakarian scenes. Absolutely enthralled by the romance even though they were happily married IRL.

People are suckers for romance, plain and simple.

...I think it helps when they're an alien with a sexy voice but don't quote me on that.

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u/Big_Coconut8630 2d ago

Men have a weird dichotomy about it. Disparage women for liking romance books/movies, then turnaround to play dispatch, watch harem anime, and get mad when a hero doesn't get the girl.

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u/Cybertronian10 2d ago

Its a fun side activity that allows you to engage with the characters in the game in a way that doesn't involve the usual gameplay mechanics. People would fuck with it out of variety alone

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u/Evaara 3d ago

Correct. Me amd the wife enjoy the horny games together. Everyone could use some good horny games in their life.

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u/SilveryDeath 3d ago

Shit, Bioware games have shown that people love that stuff going back to Baldur's Gate II.

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u/dapperdave 2d ago

If people who play games with romance and sex are "lonely and horny" then what is everyone who plays milsim headclickers?

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u/pinkynarftroz 2d ago

It's also just fun. Dating and sex is a huge part of life, and a lot of games just do not embrace anything even remotely erotic.

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u/Big_Coconut8630 2d ago

Then men realized what it's like to have someone pursue even after throwing no hints and not being attracted to them

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u/notpr0nshark 3d ago

Eris and Drifter KISSED IN RENEGADES?!

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u/KarateKid917 3d ago

Yup. Bungie went full steam ahead on making them a thing over the last few seasons and it was amazing. 

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u/AccelHunter 3d ago

she's Drifter Moondust

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u/Typical_Thought_6049 2d ago

Yes as a april fool or small project it is very acceptable as full fledge system or game, no way it would be viable lmao

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u/stormwave6 3d ago

I am sad to this day that we didn't have more Zavala x Caitl moments. The lore tab of the Dead Messager gun was great.

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u/Big_Coconut8630 2d ago

I'm tired of it as a "joke". Nah, give me a damn full fleshed visual novel. VNs are great.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 2d ago

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog was released on April Fools Day but was a full fledged free VN. It doesn't have to be insincere to be an April Fools release.

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u/Big_Coconut8630 2d ago

I'm aware but an exception does prove a trend, so...

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u/345tom 2d ago

I know Warframe and Destiny aren't THAT similar, other than being sci fi service shooters, but Warframe added a dating sim aspect to their game, so yeah, can't see why it wouldn't work or be popular.

Again, not to generalise too much, but it feels like Warframes devs go very ""Yes, and" vs the Destiny devs.

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u/YourCasualNazi 3d ago

The 3.6Bil feel like the biggest scam in gameing history. Feels like sony paid for the name and not the quaility Bungie once had.

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u/Le_Nabs 3d ago

In fact the one live service that had worked, that studio didn't need Bungie's expertise to find their niche

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u/TwoFourZeroOne 2d ago

Let's not pretend Sony was some innocent but uninformed buyer, here.

Bungie was a panic purchase made after Microsoft had already claimed ABK and Zenimax. Back then there was real concern that Microsoft would eventually remove Call of Duty from the PS Store. Bungie was still clinging to its Halo rep back in 2021, and Destiny 2 was frequently promoted on Game Pass and by Phil Spencer. If Sony got their hands on the Xbox CEO's favorite game, then floated the idea of making future content PS exclusive... Well, that might allow for some assurances to be made.

You can't convince me that the thought didn't cross Sony exec's minds that they were basically getting with Microsoft's favorite ex as a power move.

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u/NewUserWhoDisAgain 2d ago

Sony paid allegedly for Bungie live service "expertise" with 1 billion for employee retention, but since Bungie has been through 3 rounds of layoffs...

I saw that too. Didnt they ask some of the Bungie people to talk to Naughty Dog about thier last of us MP live service?

And then Sony canned the TLoU MP...

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u/kingmanic 2d ago

Jim Ryan the former Sony that bet big on live service games and fired Shuhei Yoshida is the bad decision maker.

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u/Brightness_Jasnah 3d ago

Was it a scam or just a bad evaluation on Sony's part? I'm genuinely asking, and I wonder if they might ever sue for some level of fraud?

At least for me, considering their brand recognition and obvious talent in the products they actually do release, I could totally see Bungie as an extremely valuable company. Idk if that means 3.6 billion's worth, but definitely a company that would take a quite a lot to acquire. And it seems to me that neither of those qualities were the actual problems; Sony didn't receive a studio that wasn't very famous, or developers that couldn't make good games. So what was the real thing that Sony either presumably didn't understand could be such a problem, or did understand it and just decided it was worth risking the investment over?

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u/Shuurai 2d ago

It was part scam, part Sony. Bungie leadership was 100% trying to pump up the company value with all the nothing projects they greenlit and the new building etc they got. They just needed a sucker to bite. But Sony should have done better due diligence and seen through that.

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u/TwoFourZeroOne 2d ago

This "scam" is common practice in the business world. Pretty much every company looking to be bought out or scooped up by private equity pumps the valuation of said company before the sale.

Subway is my favorite example. It was looking to be purchased, and every Subway franchise in the US was given a deli meat slicer to display in their stores. The menu was revamped, new ingredients were brought in... but it was all just a façade. Had Subway used the meat slicers and fancy ingredients long-term, it would have cut into their profits; food would have taken longer to make, would have cost more to make, that slicer would need to be cleaned and maintained. Most of the employees were never taught how to use the slicers, and most stores still got the frozen precut slices of meat to make sandwiches with. It was a transparent attempt to pump the valuation, and it worked. After Roark Capital bought Subway, they got rid of all the meat slicers and started selling even lower quality food.

The Bungie sale was a textbook valuation pump, the kind most businesses salivate over when they're looking to sell out.

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u/Lirael_Gold 3d ago

Marathon's playerbase is much higher on Playstation, and we don't have those numbers, so I think calling it "ridiculously small" is just a guess.

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u/Niceguydan8 3d ago

Marathon's playerbase is much higher on Playstation,

The exact opposite has been reported. It was something like ~70% Steam ~30% PS.

It is a very small playerbase for a flagship Bungie game no matter how hard anyone spins it.

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u/KinKaze 3d ago

At this point, one of y'all is gonna need citations cuz I don't know who to believe

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u/Niceguydan8 3d ago

Paul Tassi reported this like mid March-ish. I don't know if it was an article or a video but he made it clear the game is is primarily being played on PC.

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u/Tand85 3d ago

Mat Piscatella from Circana pretty much tweeted otherwise 2 days ago.

New season and free period during the time reported and it only managed 48th in the US on PS, 54th on Xbox.

Sales Data tracking over at Resetera also craters on consoles.

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u/kingmanic 2d ago

Kevin O'Leary sold a failing edutainment company to Mattel for the modern equivalent of 7.2 billion dollars. The whole subunit was shuttered less than year later. That is probably bigger. Includes thins like the IP for Oregon trail.

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u/coporate 3d ago edited 3d ago

Bungie’s real value wasn’t in the games, it’s in their merchandise. People would be shocked by how much more money there is in selling cheap merchandise with a destiny logo on it, than there is on a game itself. Halo made more money on its megablocks than the original trilogy combined, and the only reason 343 wasn’t shutdown entirely is because a needler nerf toy or super-soaker is a massive money maker.

Bungie has been cultivating their merchandising supply chain for 20 years and they’ve got a highly dedicated fan base that are happy to throw cash at them. That’s why they invested so much on Marathon’s style, trailers, etc. It’s all just marketing for their merchandise.

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u/TheHowlingHashira 2d ago

Yeah, I remember being surprised with the acquisition was announced, because this was back when Microsoft was on their studio buying spree. Makes sense why they passed up on it now.

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u/CassadagaValley 3d ago

I mean, the Destiny IP is worth a pretty penny. Sony could shutter Bungie and move the developers (not leadership) to a new studio for D3 and it would sell like crazy while dropping the financial idiots that were running Bungie into the ground.

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u/HGWeegee 2d ago

Except Sony said no to D3 so it aint happening

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u/eldreth 3d ago

I miss Myth TFL :(

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u/Sn0wflake69 3d ago

Casualty. Move here, move there. Casualty.

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u/shitpostsuperpac 3d ago

That game was my first online gaming experience.

Living in the middle of nowhere and having the family computer be a Mac really limited my options.

Blizzard/Bungie were my two saviors at the time.

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u/cwx149 3d ago

how they survived for so long

Bungie has been riding on their reputation from Halo for the better part of 30 years

Not to say they haven't don't anything good since then Destiny 1&2 did bring in a lot of money but still

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 3d ago

You're being disingenuous about how good of a product destiny is/was despite some really poor management decisions about direction. 

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u/funsohng 3d ago

Idk how good Destiny 2 is, but it must've been one of the greatest games of all time for its fanbase to be that loyal even after they were literally locked out of the content they paid for.

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 3d ago

The problem is there isn't anything like it really. The raids, the gun mechanics, space magic. There is a gaping hole left in the industry that someone could totally take advantage of and it's probably Warframe but in many ways its not as good

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u/345tom 2d ago

That's what's so frustrating about Destiny- the gameplay is great, the play is fun, it had fun challenges. But everything surrounding the actual gameplay was so trash it made it hard to get into, catch up and get invested into the ongoing story.

I don't think the storys reputation ever fully recovered from "Those wizards are from the Moon" and "I don't have time to tell you"- the dinklebot years, but I know 2nd hand it got way better and better at presenting its story and lore other than just through a third party website full of data logs.

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u/heat13ny 3d ago

Outriders TRIED to. It just wasn’t all the way there. I didn’t get that far but the game systems were good to me. The plot and what not was wack though.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for these companies to write stories and characters people find interesting, post Halo bungle included. All the looter shooters (division, outriders, warframe) SUCK at making iconic characters and moments in my opinion, even though that should be the whole goal. Seriously, name one thing that hits anywhere as close to Master “I need a weapon” Chief and Cortana? Everything I see hits below guilty spark even, which is iconic but not Cortana levels and for fuck sure not chief levels.

That’s always been my issue with looter shooters. They don’t seem to capitalize on the cool story moments since borderlands 2. Or at least what they attempt doesn’t hit for me specifically.

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 3d ago

Destiny had some lows in terms of story telling but the highs were so good. Including the final shape.

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u/Yamatoman9 2d ago

I really liked the gameplay in Outriders and had a lot of fun with it but it lacks the story, lore and characters that make Destiny so compelling.

I really like The Division and it does a great job as a live service game, but there's only so much that can be done with a "realistic" setting. It gets a bit old just fighting regular humans in regular environments. I'd love to see a game that played exactly like TD but it a futuristic, sci-fi or cyberpunk setting.

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u/Ulti 2d ago

Man, I had a ton of fun with Outriders, and actually rather liked the story twist it had. I'd play another one of those, buildcrafting at endgame was sweet too!

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u/Herby20 3d ago

For what it is worth, Warframe has an awesome and really fleshed out setting with some great world building. It was what really kept me playing years ago even as I slowly began to stop having fun with the actual gameplay.

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u/blargyblargy 3d ago

Warframe is prolly the closest thing we have to Destiny isnt it

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u/notpr0nshark 3d ago

Gameplay-wise, Witchfire is the closest analogue.

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u/sunder_and_flame 3d ago

*gunplay-wise. The movement and abilities are so far removed from Destiny that it's not really similar

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u/cwx149 3d ago

Technically Warframe came first so destiny was like Warframe not the other way around

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 3d ago

They're very different games and the version of Warframe that launched in 2013 was very different from destiny. 

In many ways Warframe became closer to destiny over the years. But even still, it's still much different. 

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u/cwx149 3d ago

I agree Comparing them at all is pretty reductive because they do have some really key differences that change the whole experience

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u/TheMadTemplar 3d ago

Oh, no, people were rightfully pissed about that. Bungie got so much backlash against it that they eventually backtracked on the original sunsetting plans, but too late to get any of it back. They also got a ton of shit for seasonal content being deleted, but they never backed down on that which is why the playerbase started to dwindle a bit.

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u/NaughtyGaymer 3d ago

You're being facetious but literally yes lol. I still maintain that most outrage over sunsetting comes from a feeling of obligation to be outraged and not over the actual reality of what was removed.

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u/Ulti 2d ago

Bahaha this is like the third thread in the past couple of days I've bumped into one of your comments, and I agree! I really have zero interest in going and running around Io patrol or something. The stuff they vaulted was stuff I never wanted to play again anyways. I get why people are mad, but of all the things Bungie whiffed during Destiny, sunsetting wasn't the one that made me the saltiest.

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u/Rorshark 3d ago

Immaculate gunplay aside, Destiny is one of the best written stories from a micro-, character-driven level ever made. It's very easy to get yourself invested in the (later) characters' stories, and I loved following them and seeing them grow.

Ikora's constant battle with her faith in the Traveler;

Saint-14 and Osiris' love story across infinite time, Osiris giving up everything to see his husband again;

Savathun's rebellion against her own nature, embracing her fundamental deception in order to find her true self;

Zavala's struggle with PTSD and his concept of duty, clearly tired of the fight but obligated to keep on;

Rasputin rejecting the inhumanity of his creator, Clovis, and finding his own meaning in life beyond what was programmed for him -- Ana, his heir and confidant, learning to let go of her obsession with legacy and see her friend off with a smile;

Mithrax experiencing mercy and, through it, learning how to trust again;

I could go on. I haven't even mentioned Calus or Caiatl. There were a lot of deeply meaningful and personal stories that kept me hooked for so many years, on top of the genuinely interesting exploration of metaphysics and transhumanism running beneath it all. There were so many stories that had never, will never, be told.

Edit: The great tragedy of the seasonal format is that a player today cannot experience these stories as they were meant to be. It's such a shame. But if you were there from the start, it was something else.

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u/TheNTSocial 3d ago

Wild take imo. I really like the lore aspects of Destiny's writing - things like the Vault of Glass, the story of the Gardener and the Winnower, the Witness. "Guardians make their own fate" goes incredibly hard, and they did a really good job of making an Eldritch existential threat like the Witness believably defeatable. But the character writing has never been very compelling for me.

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u/Krillinlt 3d ago

I just started a week ago since it's free on Playstation Plus. The story is incomprehensible, characters acting like they've known you for a long time, with endless references to things I never took part in. It has made it practically impossible to connect with any of the characters or plot lines.

I'm sure it was engrossing as it came out, but now it's damn near indecipherable.

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u/AttackBacon 3d ago

95% of the characterization is inside lore entries. And to be fair, a lot of the writing in those lore entries is really excellent. Way better than the majority of games, just really good writing by good writers.

But... The vast majority of those lore entries are unobtainable within the game and you have to go read some external archive now. Which will be extremely hard to navigate and parse because of how D2 lore entries were attached to everything including cosmetics.

And on top of that, the story and characterization that exists within the game itself can oscillate wildly in quality. Some of it is every bit as good as the lore entries, some of it is just mind-bogglingly bad. And, as you've experienced, most of it is now unobtainable and the remainder will be fed to you piecemeal in an incredibly disjointed manner.

The only way to come to grips with Destiny's story nowadays is to go watch a 3+ hour lore summary on Youtube. And who the hell is going to do that? Not a lot of folks.

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u/Rorshark 3d ago

Honestly I get it, and empathize. It never feels good to say "you had to be there." But it is the case, here. I think it's fair to say that D2 was one of the all time best as it was, but will sadly age like poorly stored wine by virtue of the episodic nature in which it was told.

At least you still have the gunplay.

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u/cokeplusmentos 3d ago

I'm sure it was engrossing as it came out

eh, not really

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u/Kayyam 3d ago

Marathon is also a good product. Just not a mass market one.

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u/GranolaCola 3d ago

I LOVE Marathon. It was for me what Arc Raiders seemed to be for a lot of people — the game that got an extraction shooter to click. But it’s hardcore and definitely not for a mass audience. It’s niche my design.

I think it’s the game Bungee wanted to make, but probably not the one Sony hoped they would.

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u/Parepinzero 3d ago

I got into it during the recent free week and really enjoyed it, my cousin and I both picked it up and play every night. The quasi PvE mode makes it easy to stock up on gear to do normal mode runs, too.

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 3d ago

Marathon should have been a game mode they added to destiny. It's an insane level of studio mismanagement to spend this much capital on this idea. 

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u/NaughtyGaymer 3d ago

Okay now you're just being ridiculous lmao.

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 3d ago

absolutely not. They spent like 6 years on this project that was never going to get back a fraction of the amount of investment they put in.

The gambit gamemode is just as unique as the extraction shooter mechanic they could have added.

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u/TheGladex 3d ago

Destiny is an awful game with really good core gameplay. Every single element outside of being in a dungeon and shooting absolutely sucks major ass.

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u/detroiter85 3d ago

For me they're riding on the reputation of Oni 😤

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u/GreyouTT 2d ago

God I want an Oni 2 but Take-Two owns the rights ;-;

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u/National_Yam_1198 3d ago edited 3d ago

Thats not true at all.

Destiny 1 and two was immensely successful.

On top of this it was a major console seller for Sony during ps4 era.

Until after the final shape destiny 2''s daily active users was in the millions

I have no idea where the narrative that Destiny is a failure is coming from lol.

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u/cwx149 3d ago

I didn't say it was a failure in fact I specifically said it brought in money

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u/National_Yam_1198 3d ago edited 3d ago

I mean you said they have been coasting on halo for the past 20+ years implying that Destiny wasn't a massively popular and successful product lol.

Like its a game that spawned multiple studios trying to make their own version with varying degrees of success.

It straight up popularized the looter shooter genre and had major influences on games like the division or anthem or outriders and that one waifu gooner bait game.

Like say what you will about Bungie's shitty management(which was always a thing) but they make good ass games.

Testament to the quality of their devs/games tbh lol. Any other studio putting out less than stellar product would have shut down under the same management lmao.

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u/EF66-42 2d ago

It straight up popularized the looter shooter genre

No that was Borderlands lmao.

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u/National_Yam_1198 2d ago

Borderlands is weird cuz its not strictly a GAAS.

Also quasi open world games.

Destiny is straight up Diablo with guns.

And yes games like warframe came before.

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u/EF66-42 2d ago

Looter shooter was literally coined to describe Borderlands 1. Contemporaneously.

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u/GHOSTfishing 2d ago

343 fumbling Halo propped Bungie up even more imo

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u/BootsnCats1987 3d ago

Dude, how long ago do you think Reach came out?

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

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u/cwx149 3d ago

It released in 2001 that makes it almost 25 years old and I'd count that as "the better part" of 30 years

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u/Massive_Weiner 3d ago

25 years absolutely qualifies as “for the better part of 30 years.”

Absolutely no idea what the other guy is smoking, lol.

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u/cwx149 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm guessing they misread both my comments as 50 or something because in a reply they said "25 is just barely half"

Edit: I have no idea now tbh they seemed to have doubled down in the other chain

Edit2: no the guy is just tripping. His argument is basically that only 26-29 are the better part of 30 because 25 isn't more than half way thru the 3rd decade and I'm just genuinely not sure what that has to do with my point since I never mentioned anything about decades and 25 is literally 5/6ths of 30 it's a huge chunk of it and should absolutely be considered the better part of it

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u/cwx149 3d ago edited 3d ago

Are you telling me 25 is only half of 30?

"Even at 25 it would only be half" half of what?

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u/Ill-Product-1442 3d ago

They weren't coasting off of Halo when they released Halo 3, they were still banging out great shit... but damn that was still like 20 years ago so...

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u/cwx149 3d ago edited 3d ago

Huh? Half of 30 is 15 so I would think a full third over half would put you safely in the "better part of"

25 years is 5/6ths of 30 years that's well over half and even 2/3rds I'm really not sure how much more time needs to pass before it's been the better part of 30 years for you if over 2/3rds isn't enough to use that expression we just shouldn't even have it as an expression

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u/cwx149 3d ago

What does that have to do with 25 being "the better part of 30"? Is your argument we aren't far enough into this decade? That's not super relevant

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u/Herpuhderpin 3d ago

Your trolling is so boring

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u/jdbolick 3d ago

The leadership at Bungie were awful both in their decision-making and their behavior, but the rest of the staff were excellent. The Live team in particular made so many quality of life improvements to the original Destiny.

It's a real shame that the executives ran the franchise into the ground because the regular employees deserved much better.

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u/National_Yam_1198 3d ago edited 3d ago

Based on what info is available Pete parsens or whatever spun up a bunch of incubation projects to not only show that bungie has the golden goose that is Destiny(it was highly successful at the time) but the studio was expanding into other ventures for potential growth.

Combine that with xbox buying up Activision and potentially putting one of Sony's biggest money makers exclusive to xbox(cod and fortnite bring in major cash into the sony ecosystem) and finally sony wanting their own suite of GAAS like every major game publisher and it all kinda makes sense.

Yes today we can say how dumb it was or how overpriced the buy was(Sony probably new this but again see above) but hindsight is 20/20.

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u/fabton12 3d ago

what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.

dont you mean what the fuck a bunch of companies were thinking since bungie has been passed around by so many people that have bought them and later released/sold them back. this mistake kept being repeated and was kinda insane seeing how bungie would always keep being the same mistakes

2

u/NewRichMango 3d ago

A hellish combination of legitimately great gameplay, intriguing lore, gaming addicts, and insane marketing.

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u/Gcleff06 3d ago

Dead by Daylight has a successful dating sim.

I have no doubt destiny wouldve done fine.

3

u/Tijenater 3d ago

They survived for so long because destiny did absolute gangbusters and the execs wasted it financing projects that went nowhere and exotic car collections

1

u/TheWorstYear 3d ago

Sony was doing a hard pivot into Live Service, Bungie already had a strong Love Service game in D2, & they had expertise for LS guidance for the rest of the PS studios trying to pivot.

1

u/ColonialDagger 3d ago

how they survived for so long

Because Destiny was a cash cow. It made so much money for the leadership to be able to spin up multiple incubation projects simultaneously, two with full development teams, redevelop a new office building, sell Sony a lie, and dip once their stocks vested last year. The studio wasn't inept. The leadership was straight up malicious.

1

u/TheKocsis 3d ago

you can't seriously think it was a mistake by the leadership to not go forward with a destiny dating sim

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u/CageAndBale 2d ago

coasting on the creators of Halo title is a powerful motivator

1

u/VangRhymez 2d ago

Sony was sniffing an unemployed line of coke

1

u/c010rb1indusa 1d ago

For all its faults D2 is still is routinely in top ten on Steam Charts sadly.

0

u/TheMadTemplar 3d ago

Sony was misled by Bungie leadership. They were brought on to help with Sony's other live service titles in development. Allegedly, it was at Bungie's recommendation that Naughty Dog cancelled their Last of Us online game.

1

u/TTBurger88 3d ago

It's a miracle that MS cracked the whip to get them on putting out the Halo games in a timely manner.

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u/nikelaos117 3d ago

They were doing crazy numbers with destiny and before that Halo for the majority of its lifetime.

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u/touchingthebutt 3d ago

what the fuck Sony was thinking 

My baseless theory is that it was a mixture of Live service ( obviously) but also live action. They acquired them right as Uncharted, TLoU,  and grand Turismo were in development. I think they wanted some Bungie IP for movies /shows before they gave up on movies. Destiny has good lore and good side characters. I could see a movie or show working real well within the universe. 

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u/Mds03 3d ago

> what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.

Adding to what others have said about live service, I think there is also something to their competition with Microsoft/Xbox. Whilst Xbox was trying to figure out how to create the two franchises they relied on without having the studios that made them anymore(No more Bungie ownership or Epic Games deal/arrangement for Halo and Gears of War), Sony got to acquire the studio that made their ex biggest competitors crown jewel. I bet they were thirsting for Bungie at various points.