PlayStation-Maker Sony To Buy Halo-Creator Bungie Inc for $3.6 Billion
PlayStation-maker Sony is escalating its competition with Xbox-maker Microsoft by buying the video game studio behind one of Xbox's hit games.
Washington: PlayStation-maker Sony is escalating its competition with Xbox-maker Microsoft by buying the video game studio behind one of Xbox's hit games. Sony Interactive Entertainment said Monday it would spend $3.6 billion to buy Bungie Inc, an independent game publisher based in Bellevue, Washington. Bungie makes the popular game franchise Destiny and was the original developer of Xbox-owned Halo. Sony PS5 Restock in India: Reliance Digital & ShopAtSC Sites Crash Due to Overwhelming Demand for Gaming Console.
Microsoft bought Bungie in 2000, but later spun off the game studio in 2007 while retaining intellectual property rights to the Halo franchise. Sony is one of the world's biggest video game companies, but Microsoft has been ramping up its gaming ambitions, most recently by announcing plans to buy high-profile game publisher Activision Blizzard for USD 68.7 billion. Acquiring the owner of titles like Call of Duty and Candy Crush would immediately put Microsoft ahead of Nintendo as the third-biggest gaming company in global sales, behind Japan's Sony and Chinese tech giant Tencent.
Xbox's top executive, Phil Spencer, told news site Axios last year that “we've learned a lot” since letting go of Bungie. Spencer on Monday tweeted his congratulations to PlayStation for “adding a talented team" to its game studios. Bungie started in Chicago in 1991 and made its early hits, such as Myth and Marathon, for personal computers. It now employs about 900 people and is based not far from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Sony's video game division is centered in San Mateo, California.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 01, 2022 04:00 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).