Neither Activision nor Bungie would discuss specifics of yesterday's surprise 10-year publishing agreement. But to sign a developer with a pedigree like Bungie to a deal for one game would cost a pretty penny, let alone ten years worth. So how much coin did Activision have to pony up to land Bungie?
Wedbush Morgan Analyst Michael Pachter said the deal may have cost Activision as much as $100 million upfront, but suggested there's no reason to believe the publisher would need to fund Bungie's game development.
"Activision may be funding the game development, but Bungie is only 180 people. If they make $125,000 each per year (that's WAY too high, but it's a reasonable starting point for discussion), their overhead is $22,500,000 per year," Pachter told IGN. "Activision may have paid them five years of operating expense up front, but it doesn't make sense that the deal was negotiated in this manner."
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
GL compiles a list of some of the most mind-blowing video game narrative twists in recent memory, from The Last of Us to Outer Wilds
With articles like these cant you tag the games mentioned so that we can know ahead of time if there’s a spoiler to avoid?
Not clicking on your article otherwise.
$100 million up front? Pssshhh That's just pocket change :-P
Not enough.
It cost all the money that was owed to Infinity Ward.
Didn't Microsoft have some agreement with Bungie where Microsoft got first dibs on publishing rights to whatever Bungie developed? What does it mean now that Activision has a publishing contract with Bungie?
I bet Kotick is salivating from the mouth as we speak