DF Direct Weekly returns once again - perhaps inevitably given its name - and the major topic for discussion this weekly is equally inevitable: the news that Halo and Destiny creator Bungie is the latest target in the ongoing studio acquisition war, becoming a member of the illustrious collection of PlayStation Studios. However, seemingly, this is not an exclusivity play: indeed, Destiny 2 and future Bungie titles will remain as multi-format as they are today, which raises the question: what's in it for Sony?
The GamesIndustry.biz interview with Jim Ryan paints a picture of a company looking to acquire the personnel and the skills to compete in the lucrative games-as-a-service arena, while a snapshot of 860,000 Destiny 2 active users during the course of one day in a relatively quiet period, meaning that while the game doesn't dominate discourse, it's clearly got a large, committed audience: good business for Sony then, and one where you probably wouldn't want to lose the 32 percent gaming on an Xbox console. With the news that Sony apparently has a further 10 live service titles coming in a four year period (!), having that kind of expertise on-hand also adds to the value. But with that said, a $3.6b purchase in a world where Microsoft snaffled Zenimax/Bethesda for $7.5b is eye-opening to say the least.