Earlier this week, Sony announced its intent to purchase Bungie for the low price of $3.6 billion. That's nothing compared to the $70 billion Microsoft plans to spend purchasing Activision Blizzard, but it's still a hefty chunk of change that gives Sony a world-class studio with over a million dedicated fans.
However, the terms of the acquisition were anything but typical. Bungie will retain full creative control over all of its projects and can still publish games wherever it wants--including Xbox and PC. Sony gains control of Bungie's revenue streams, but that seemed to be about it. Highly unusual for a company known for creating exclusive titles.
Thanks to Sony's most recent earnings call with investors, we now have a better idea of what Sony gets out of the deal. Sony financial director Hiroki Totoki explained that buying Bungie is about turning Bungie's IP into something more than just games.
"[It's] not just for [the] gaming area, but the multi-using of IP and merchandising of IP - like a game title maybe put into movies," Totoki said. "Bungie wants to nurture the IP they have in a multi-dimensional manner, and that's their hope. For that, we believe we can help that - we have [Sony] Pictures and [Sony] Music, and Bungie can leverage our platform so that their IP can flourish and grow big."
Sony already has plenty of experience turning its intellectual property into TV and movies, and now it hopes to leverage that capacity for Destiny. We already know that Bungie was fixing to break Destiny beyond games when the studio hired executives with connections to the movie and TV industry last year. Now those connections are going to pay off with Sony’s help.
Of course, it's still too soon in the acquisition process for Bungie to announce a Destiny TV show. But once the deal goes through, we wouldn't be surprised to hear about a new show coming to streaming platforms or even a new movie coming to a theater near you.