I don’t know how I feel about PlayStation (Sony) and Xbox (Microsoft) buying up all of the huge studios. I much prefer the kind gesture of them buying up small and mid-sized developers, so they can help fund their next project.
PlayStation’s purchase of Housemarque (creators of Returnal) felt like a better acquisition to me. Sure, it makes their upcoming titles more likely to be exclusive to PlayStation, but it gives the studio more funding, resources and comfort in whatever comes next.
The same goes for Xbox when they announced all of those mid-sized studio acquisitions just a few years ago. Studios like Double Fine, Obsidian, Ninja Theory. Later, we got those big purchases of Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard just a few months ago.
Xbox also has their ID@Xbox program which helps smaller developers self-publish their games on Xbox consoles.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for Sony and Microsoft to be buying up these huge studios. I do expect certain games to remain exclusive to one of the consoles, but not all.
I believe that once Microsoft bought Bethesda and Starfield was announced as an Xbox Exclusive title (Xbox and PC), PlayStation had to make a big move of their own.
Whatever updates are coming to Destiny 2 and a possible Destiny 3 will most likely remain on all platforms. However, I bet Bungie is working on some brand new big IP, and that will be PlayStation’s version of Starfield.
I don’t think “Acquisition Season” has ended just yet. I bet both PlayStation and Xbox will continue to buy more and more studios. This is only the beginning. The big question is: What studio will Nintendo buy when they enter the Acquisition Wars? (Answer: Probably none, Nintendo does their own thing).
The Official Posts can be found here:
PlayStation x Bungie Blog Post
Xbox x Activision | Blizzard | King Post
P.S.: Yesterday, the PlayStation x Bungie news broke while I was out for a run. When I returned home I checked my phone and saw the news. My immediate thought was that PlayStation was still feeling kind of sour about that Xbox Crash Bandicoot tweet, so they went after Xbox’s original baby. The creators of Halo (Bungie). Of course, Halo is now owned by Xbox and developed by 343 Studios.
I don’t think that’s completely true, but I thought I should include it since it was just a quick thought I had.
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