Sony to Purchase Videogame Maker Bungie in $3.6 Billion Deal

The current deal exercise provides massive console makers extra methods to compete towards one another by buying content material they might supply solely to their clients at launch, via subscription providers or different means.

“Bungie has created and continues to evolve a number of the world’s most beloved videogame franchises and, by aligning its values with folks’s need to share gameplay experiences, they bring about collectively hundreds of thousands of individuals all over the world,” stated Sony Group Corp. Chairman and Chief Government

Kenichiro Yoshida.

Bungie CEO

Pete Parsons

stated in a separate information launch that the deal will assist Bungie develop whereas preserving the studio’s inventive independence.

“In the present day, Bungie begins our journey to turn into a worldwide multi-media leisure firm,” Mr. Parsons stated.

After the deal closes, Bungie might be an impartial subsidiary of Sony Interactive Leisure and might be run by its board chaired by Mr. Parsons and Bungie’s present administration staff, Sony stated.

In 2000, Microsoft acquired Bungie to develop video games for its then-forthcoming Xbox console.

The studio discovered success within the early 2000s with the cult-classic Halo sequence, which is out there solely on Microsoft’s Xbox system and never Sony’s PlayStation.

Bungie, based mostly in Bellevue, Wash., was break up off from Microsoft in 2007. Microsoft’s Xbox Sport Studios has continued to supply new Halo video games since then and the corporate owns the mental property behind the franchise.

In 2010, Bungie signed a 10-year publishing deal round its Future franchise with Activision. The tie-up resulted in early 2019, with Activision saying the shooter sequence didn’t meet its monetary expectations.

Sony stated Monday the Bungie staff will stay targeted on the long-term growth of “Future 2” and work on increasing the Future universe and creating “completely new worlds in future IP.”

Along with Sony’s deal for Bungie and Microsoft’s deal for Activision,

Take-Two Interactive Software program Inc.

stated in January that it had agreed to accumulate cellular sport maker

Zynga Inc.

for $11 billion. The exercise comes after mergers-and-acquisitions offers inside the sport business at massive almost tripled to $26.2 billion in 2021 from $8.9 billion in 2020, in response to knowledge from PitchBook.

Final yr international client spending on sport software program rose 1.4% to about $180.3 billion, in response to business tracker Newzoo BV. In 2020, such spending jumped about 23% from the earlier yr, because the pandemic’s social-distancing restrictions prompted folks to show to on-line leisure, the analytics agency stated.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com and Will Feuer at will.feuer@wsj.com