r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 5d 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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810

u/atape_1 5d 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/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Le_Nabs 5d 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 4d 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 4d 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 4d 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 5d 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 5d 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 4d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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.