Sony has now basically taken over the Destiny 2 profitability issues as well.
Lol, Destiny 2 has no profitability issues at all. Even being almost 7 years old it generates hundreds of millions per year.
Out of all the games in SIE history, it must be the one who generated the biggest amount of revenue and profit.
Takeovers have costs that go beyond just cash, look at how Embracer got fucked and how Microsoft and Sony are feeling pain rn.
Embracer didn't get fucked because of a takeover. They got fucked because they were going to have a huge investment (rumored to be from the Saudi family) they were counting with, but at the deal failed. The thing is they were sure that were going to receive that money so spent a lot of money counting with it before they received it, which was a big mistake.
Sony is not receiving any pain from acquisitions. Like any acquisitions, there are some related post acquisitions costs, like retention bonuses, hirings to grow the studios, new offices stuff and so on. It's stuff they already had planned not an issue at all.
Regarding MS yes, we knew ABK in terms of finantials did a great job but they had internal issues with management, tons of key people having left the company, several projects in development hell, etc. Plus Bethesda, we knew they weren't on their prime since while ago, also lost important key staff, their games took forever and when released weren't as good and successful as should, etc.
The budgets of Starfield (over 4000 people on its game credits) or Diablo IV (over 9000 people on its game credits) must have been retardedly high. Definetively MS has stuff to address there.
Sony will probably sell Bungie. They are not satisfied with them. Hence why Totoki critised them openly in public.
They won't, it's the most successful team they have. It would be super retarded. They are generating hundreds of millions per year with Destiny 2, are supporting, helping etc. the other GaaS and the teaser of their upcoming game broke records.
Bungie now has around twice the people they had when the acquisition was announced. Sony wouldn't have grow them that much if they weren't happy with them.
What Totoki said about Bungie is the same any finantials/business executive would say about any gamedev studio. He got asked about Bungie and he said very creative, talented and passitionate folks but should improve regarding achieving milestones and budgeting. Basically the description of any dev team, he just got too honest.
Beyond silly to suggest that Sony would sell a company they just bought for 3.6 billion dollars because one expansion pack undersold and they had to delay a couple of titles.
Yes. And on top of this we should see what is true in the rumor of the expansion underperforming, because the game kept making a huge chunk of money. Maybe the expansion didn't achieve their forecast (in case of being true) for the first months but still had great numbers.
In any case, it's a project in almost sunseting stage. Their more important stuff would be the new projects they have in the works, like the new games plus the movie/tv adaptations in addition to the support and knowledge they provide to the other GaaS teams.