Destiny 2 has set a new Twitch Record with a peak of 523,610 Concurrent Viewers Watching Root of Nightmares Raid

[KiryuRealty]

Bungie is 100% owned by Sony.
They can publish their own games if that you saying about “independent” but they pretty much depends on Sony.

It is not different from others Somy’s studios… that how they handle things… each studio has it own politics, hierarchies, CEO, etc.

It’s actually completely different. The other studios they own are part of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation division, but Bungie is on the same organizational level as the PlayStation division, as a division unto themselves.

PlayStation management tells studios like Naughty Dog and Insomniac what they can do, but Bungie makes all their own decisions.

 

[ethomaz]

It’s actually completely different. The other studios they own are part of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation division, but Bungie is on the same organizational level as the PlayStation division, as a division unto themselves.

PlayStation management tells studios like Naughty Dog and Insomniac what they can do, but Bungie makes all their own decisions.

That is not all true.

Sony doesn’t tell what Naughty Dog or Insommiac can do… even in Spider-Man case it was total Insommiac decision… Sony just asked if they have interest in work in a Marvel IP and the IP was chooses by Insommiac.

The difference you described it is the same I described before… Bungie has a Publisher arm while Naughty Dog not.

Due that (having Publishing powers) Bungie is in the same level as SIE Publishing… all PS Studios as Bungie and SIE Publishing… all Studios can ask Bungie or SIE Publishing to well publish their games.

All these parts are below the SIE and so below Sony G&NS.

Let’s draw it in very lazy way.

Sony
— G&NS
—— SIE
——— SIE Publishing
——— PlayStation Studios
——— Bungie

BTW in the merge Bungie lose some keys areas for an organization: Financials, RH, Legal, Accounting… that is now done by Sony themselves.

 

[Yurinka]

They are not structurally independent but perform their duties mostly independent from SIE. If MS acquires ABK in full, they will be fully integrated into the Xbox division (FWIW it's worth pointing out that Xbox is a division in MS while SIE is a subsidiary of Sony) under Microsoft Gaming, and all of their decisions will have to be ran through to Phil Spencer, who will oversee ABK as one of three branches under Microsoft Gaming (XGS, Zenimax, ABK).

That's a good way to put it but it also shows the difference between Bungie's integration in SIE vs. say Zenimax's into the Xbox division (or ABKs would be if the deal is approved).

Like in the case of Bungie and Bethesda, ABK would remain as a separate publisher label even if being a fully owned subsidiary of the Xbox Gaming Division or SIE. When acquired Bungie reports to Jimbo and ABK (as Bethesda does) would report to Phil.

Even if being a different publisher label and publishing their games multipatform, they are still a fully owned subsidiary. So any day their boss (Phil/Jimbo) may change their mind or break their promise about the strategy of these pubilshers and make their future games exclusive.

They paid $3.6 billion, $1.2 billion of which was for talent retention to be paid out over a period of years. So they actually paid $2.4 billion upfront.

The acquisition itself, the price of buying all the stocks so getting full control of Bungie, was $2.4B. Then the other $1.2B were retention bonuses and other acquisition related costs.