Sony “Vastly overpaid in desperation” for Bungie, Industry Analyst Claims
It seems that 2022 is the year for games industry acquisitions. We’re only two months into the year, and everything has happened. Microsoft announced the addition of Activision during my worst lunch break. A few days later, Sony seemed to have reacted with plans to purchase Bungie, the studio that created Destiny and the Halo series.
Although Sony’s deal was $3.6 billion less than Microsoft’s $68.9billion deal, it is still quite a large sum. Some even suggest that it was more than it needed to be.
Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst, said that Sony may have acted in haste out of sheer desperation.
“To give you an example, EA purchased Respawn three years ago for $700million with 400 developers. And they generate $700 million in revenue per year. He explained that Bungie generates about $200 million annually in revenue. Sony is hugely underpaid, so I don’t think it was fair. This was my opinion. It was a statement to say that we won’t let Microsoft win to buy something out of desperation. This deal doesn’t make sense to me.
Although I am not a finance expert, you would think that acquisitions with billions of dollars funding could be organized in less than two weeks. That’s because there was so little time between the announcements by Sony and Microsoft. It’s impossible to imagine how you could panic-buy an entire studio. But what do I know?
Sony has not yet provided a date for the completion of their deal. However, they have made it clear Bungie will continue to operate as an independent studio and remain a multiplatform platform studio.
