Nah, I won't settle with this. Of course I know that I have no power in any of this, but I won't stop voicing my concerns. If everyone just shrugged the shoulders like you do, then we'd send a message that we are okay with this. Maybe some people even are okay with this, but I certainly am not, so I won't shrug my shoulders. I want the gaming landscape to be as diverse as possible.

The only power I do have is my wallet, so I'm going to use it by refusng to buy any products from these companys. Which, to be fair, is very easy for me since no products from either Acti/Blizzard nor Bungie ever interested me in the first place. I only bought Diablo III on the Switch and regretted it soon. I will miss Bethesda and id software games a bit, though.

Absolutely.

Destiny 2 is one of the most popular live service games today. I'm not sure if they have the driving forces behind Halo but Destiny 2 came out to a lot of critical success (85 Meta on PS4). 

I agree. The title should read "SONY bought Destiny for 3.6 billion".

One could argue that MS overspent buying the studios they bought because the talents behind the massive IPs will flee and no can force them to stay, but you can easily counter-argue this as MS invested in IPs and a legacy that's been in the making for decades, not just in studios and developers. If all Bethesda/Activasion veterans leave, MS get to keep The Elder Scrolls and CoD, the legacy that will make GP the go-to gaming service. On the other hand, if the Halo-makers leave Bungie, Sony gets to keep Destiny..... and I don't believe this particular IP is worth the risk.

Certainly, the incentive for developers to leave first party studios and start from scratch is there, including the financial incentive (start a successful third party studio and get bought years later for billions of dollars... profits). Not to mention, the freedom that comes with working for an independent studio. 

To me, it sounds like SONY made a freak-out acquisition. The reality is acquisitions are getting expensive and SONY could've bought more for less last year and definitely during the PS4 era, someone is a little late to the party...

I truly believed SONY's partnerships is one way to work with successful developers and make new SONY-owned IP without the burden of expanding your studios or the risk of making the wrong acquisition. I think these partnerships are a much better response to what MS has been doing, although I acknowledge it isn't nearly enough. To be fair, MS brought nuclear weapons to a gunfight, I don't know if SONY can ever respond appropriately to the massive blows MS has delivered. 

Back to Bungie acquisition and the importance of IPs. Theoretically, KONAMI would've been a much better buyout, even if you close down all of KONAMIs studios and fire all their developers after the acquisition. Give MGS to Naughty Dog, give Castlevania to Santa Monica, and watch as both games turn into gold (a 3D castlevania by SM following the Netflix series art style, oh my..) . In addition, they would've given their future gaming services a much bigger value than they have by acquiring Bungie. 

Bungie and Zenimax make similar revenue annually, the difference is that one cost half of the other one.

Absolutely they are. Destiny 2 is still pretty big. 

Big enough to still have a constant stream of support and expansions.

They have a pretty good track record with quality too. Next new ip they release is likely to be pretty good and sell well.

While Sony paid a massive premium over their market cap, it's still a good buy. 

Let's just hope that they don't dump their ongoing focus on great single-player experiences as well. One of my favorite aspects of Sony and the PS brand is that there are still so many great single-player experiences to be had.

On a different note; all these huge buys are not beneficial to us or the developers. The market will narrow and potentially lose depth in time, there will be more and more revenue and less and less incentive to not slavically follow recipes for continued smiles in the boardroom, and not much else as an end goal. I'm deeply troubled by the outlooks of game development in the coming 5-10 years following all these monster acquisitions. 

"an independent subsidiary"

I think in Bungie there is one great businessman, someone who was able to buy themselves out of Microsoft, then buy the Destiny IP and now secure fook loads of money while being essentially a studio doing what they want.

On topic, I'm getting a little sad with all these purchased because all these companies are out billions and yet we, as consumers, have not got a single new game or studio from it. They could have opened and funded untold amount of new studios with budgets in the hundreds of millions to make whatever they wanted. But nope.

I hope Sony didn't acquire Bungie for their current revenue, then the deal will pay off in maybe 20-30 years. The success of Destiny will certainly not last that long, so Sony has to hope Bungie creates something equally successful. It is a gamble. The success of Zenimax on the other hand is not just based on one IP, but several. And I am sure Microsoft didn't buy them because of their revenue, but because their set of IPs and Bethesda's proven ability to create new successful IPs, creates a strong insentive for a broad range of audiences to sign up to Gamepass.

Destiny isn’t as big as it used to be. There’s a reason they split from Activision and went free to play. And the price tag is insane. I doubt MS offered to pay anywhere near that. But I don’t think the deal was completely about Bungie games, I think Sony wants their tech to make more of their games live service like Destiny is. 

If it were about Bungie themselves, then they wouldn’t be a “fully independent subsidiary”.

Wow didn't see this coming especially from a studio that bought it's independence twice. But anyway I'm happy for both.
This deal, IMO, is proof that subscription based distribution service is key for the future and that Sony is fully committed to this with their project Spartacus has even thought they confirmed that games will remain multiplat it is certain that you won't see Destiny on Gamepass once contractual agreement end.
With the stance Sony is taking recently, I can truly see a distant future where both MS and Sony releasing their subscription service and games on competing hardware. If that's the case Xbox and Playstation hardware will no more be a decision that will allow you to play game X and not game Y but will rather represent their manufacturer vision of what's the best box to enjoy games.