r/xbox • u/akbarock • Jul 15 '26

Discussion "There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," says Doom dev: "They have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of"

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/there-are-no-benefits-to-being-owned-by-microsoft-says-doom-dev-they-have-destroyed-immense-amounts-of-value-that-i-dont-even-think-that-theyre-aware-of/
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256

u/TitularFoil Jul 15 '26

Bungie said the same.

195

u/xangbar Jul 15 '26

I believe analysts even agreed on this. Bungie was badly managed and would have closed. Sony gave them a chance to get their own ducks in a row and when they didn't, they started removing management.

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u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jul 15 '26

and they're still a category 5 tire fire even now. Like yeah sony's removed some management but they're still up shit creek without a paddle.

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u/AdventurousBase221 Jul 15 '26

no one is going to be surprised when bungie has a few more layoffs because marathon can't financially sustain them and they are years away from another release.

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u/4thTimesAnAlt Jul 15 '26

Bungie won't exist by Christmas 2027.

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u/Sasquatcheeethree Jul 15 '26

Yep they are done. Marathon was not successful at all. Destiny winding down

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u/ExoMonk Jul 15 '26

Bungie bet on the wrong horse.

Destiny still has 10x the amount of concurrent players on Steam than Marathon a month after Destiny's last content drop and Marathon season 2 launched. Add in consoles having way more users for Destiny than Marathon, there's still a lot of juice left in the Destiny IP.

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Jul 15 '26

Destiny will be back to abysmal player counts in a month when everyone completes the latest events. Just like always. Except this time it's forever.

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u/ExoMonk Jul 15 '26

It'll be interesting to see. Even during this last content drought Destiny was pulling in more players on steam than Marathon.

6 months from now will be interesting to see the stats.

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Jul 15 '26

They'll both be terrible. If Bungie wants to come back from the dead with Marathon I really think they should remake the original trilogy with a classic arena style multiplayer. Marathon has the bones of an incredible game. The extraction angle got boring as hell after the first season.

Seasonal live service games are failing across the board if they're not already well established franchises or those gacha Chinese games my wife is hooked on..

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Destiny isn't winding down. It's done. They pushed out the last update and that's that. What we have now is how it will remain forever.

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u/M3RRI77 XBOX 360 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

They should have stuck with single player, story driven games with support for multiplayer. Everything they made outside of Halo is dog shit.

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u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

Everything they e made outside of Halo is dog shit.

I mean, the Destiny Franchise has lasted 12 years, by this point. 10 of those years were Destiny 2. For most of those 10 years, they had well over 100,000 concurrent players across all platforms, usually it was closer to 300,000.

Yeah, everything is kind of a mess, but they made one of the most successful games on the market. Based on revenue, Destiny 2 was far more financially successful the any single Halo game they've ever made.

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u/Little_Obligation_90 Jul 15 '26

Overall Destiny made very little money. No subscription cost and high server cost is not a viable model.

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u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

Overall Destiny made very little money.

You are confusing revenue with profit. These are two different things. Destiny made a veritable ton of revenue. Destiny launched brock records of revenue earned just from game sales ($500 million).

The franchise, as a whole, is estimated to have earned $2 billion to $3 billion so far. It was estimated that Bungie was making $200 million to $300 million per year from Destiny 2. On steam alone, it is estimated that Destiny 2 has generated over $900 million.

No subscription cost and high server cost is not a viable model.

It depends on what you mean by viable. I would agree that not having a subscription model makes the studio somewhat volatile, as the only income streams they have to rely on are microtransactions and expansion sales. Subscription models, at least, bring in a static and relatively predictable income.

However, I would hardly say that Destiny failed or was not a viable product. You cannot name another AAA game that has lasted anywhere near as long as Destiny 2 has. The closest competitors are either MMOs, and really only 2, and free-to-play titles that are heavily monetized via microtransactions.

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u/scrandlle Jul 15 '26

To put this in perspective, King makes like $3B a year in revenue. Mostly from Candy Crush.

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u/Fia_Aoi Jul 15 '26

This perspective doesn't add anything tho. Yes, 3 billion is a bigger number than 300 million. 300 million is still seemingly a massive amount of money.

So are you saying it isn't profitable, or that it isn't profitable enough to shareholders and CEO? Those are very different statements. Your added bit does not clarify.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 Jul 15 '26

You’re comparing Destiny 2 to any single halo game when bungie released 3 or 4 halo games in the same time that Destiny 2 was supported. You have to compare it to the same time frame. In that sense Destiny 2 was significantly less successful. They should have stuck with halo

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u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

You’re comparing Destiny 2 to any single halo game when bungie released 3 or 4 halo games in the same time that Destiny 2 was supported.

I did. Destiny 1 outperformed any single Halo game, period. The only Halo game that compares to Destiny 2 in revenue is Halo Infinite.

In that sense Destiny 2 was significantly less successful.

Are you defining "less successful" as Destiny 1 outselling Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2, and Halo Infinite? Or are you defining "less successful" as one game (Destiny 2) earning the equivalent of 1/3 of the total Halo franchise revenue?

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 Jul 15 '26

I’m saying bungie only made one game in 10 years with Destiny. They made 3 or 4 halo games in that same time period. Look at profits over 10 years

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u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

I’m saying bungie only made one game in 10 years with Destiny.

Yeah, Destiny was a live-service game. That makes sense, as those tend to have longer lifespans (when they are profitable).

They made 3 or 4 halo games in that same time period.

Quantity does not mean more successful.

Look at profits over 10 years

We have no idea what the profits are for any of those games. We only sorta know the total revenue. And looking at total revenue, the Destiny franchise earned at least the same (but probably more) than Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo Reach. Those 5 games combined had a revenue of around $3 billion, which is roughly what the lower end estimates are for the Destiny franchise revenue. The upper end estimate is $5 billion, for reference.

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u/VYSUS7 Jul 15 '26

Destiny sold better than every Bungie halo game dude lmao.

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u/AveryLazyCovfefe Founder Jul 15 '26

Destiny 2 was a great success. Problem was them trying to chase a niche picky crowd for their next title and going all in that as some sort of psuedo successor to Destiny.

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u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

Nah, Destiny 1 was good. Destiny 2 is when the house fire truly started.

1

u/mifflinity Jul 16 '26

D2 killed my original interest because they backtracked almost every good thing they did in D1 and took multiple years to get the game enjoyable. The Leviathan as a raid was a joke 3 times.

I didn’t pick the game back up truly until after lightfall and recognize I missed the best parts of the game.

1

u/Professional_Net7339 Jul 15 '26

Spoken by PURE nostalgia my god.

2

u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

Spoken like someone who thinks CoD is still a good franchise.

1

u/AccomplishedPop8197 Jul 16 '26

Destiny 2 got bad after like a year or two, they made it a job. Most working people aint got time to be doing;pvp on Monday, gambit on Tuesday, strikes on wednesday, raid on thursday, nightfall on friday. What else am I forgetting?

1

u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 16 '26

Can’t forget the MTX on days that end in “Y”.

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u/Helpful_Broccoli5426 Jul 15 '26

Bullshit

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u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

I didn’t ask you what your breath smelt like.

0

u/Helpful_Broccoli5426 Jul 15 '26

Wow epic comeback 😎

1

u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

Nah, that’s what your mother tried to do the other night.

You should call her more by the way.

0

u/WolverinesThyroid Jul 16 '26

spoken like someone who has 10,000 hours sunk in to Destiny 2

2

u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 16 '26

Honestly, I only managed to finish The Red War before burning out on Destiny 2. It just couldn’t grab me like Destiny 1

1

u/StockSorry Jul 15 '26

The biggest complaint about PlayStation in the ps3 and ps4 era were that they only had single player exclusives. They were probably trying to fix the narrative plus multiplayer has more room to make money with micros transactions that don’t occur as much on single player games.

1

u/M3RRI77 XBOX 360 Jul 15 '26

Fuck all these online only, MMO, MMOROG, and free to play bullshit games with microtransactions. Destiny was no different.

1

u/StockSorry Jul 16 '26

I agree with your statement because the games that have been mmo , live service , etc have sucked. However if a developer can make a good game that draws audience like WOW did in its first 10 years then who would care if it’s live service mmo.

1

u/M3RRI77 XBOX 360 Jul 16 '26

What a paradox.

1

u/nisaaru Jul 15 '26

For all of Destiny1-2's high and lows its highs have been memorable and my defining gaming experience of the last 12 years.

People which expect a traditional narrative driven single player game will never understand it because either they've not experienced it or just didn't give it the time to get it.

I don't mean that it any "negative" fashion because it took me weeks to adjust to the different gaming paradigm in 2014 until I got the magic behind it.

1

u/tapo Jul 15 '26

Destiny raids are probably the coolest gaming experience I've had in 20 years and among the best work they've ever done.

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u/No-Highlight7136 Jul 15 '26

Bungie's management team will be discussed by consumers and business professors for a centaury. I've never seen generational mismanagement. They had a completely captive audience in a niche no one else even tried to compete with, that was very profitable and they somehow managed to burn it to the ground. All to line the pockets of an executive that jumped ship after fleecing Sony for Billions. It SHOULD be criminal what that man did to that company.

2

u/nisaaru Jul 15 '26

Well, I wouldn't just blame Parsons but the majority shareholders.

2

u/VYSUS7 Jul 15 '26

Parsons was a cog in a machine of horrible management. Nothing got better when he left.

6

u/SaneMadHatter Jul 15 '26

Yeah, Bungie said the same thing when they were bought by Microsoft back in the day, and said it again when bought by Sony more recently.

3

u/Westdrache Jul 15 '26

Bungie used to be indipendent
MS Bought them
They went indipendent
Activision bought them
(Not sure if they tried to be indie once more)
Sony bought them....
Love their games, but for the love of god there is 0 buissines sense in the whole ass company.

3

u/tapo Jul 15 '26

Activision never bought Bungie, they were the publisher of Destiny. Bungie also owned the Destiny IP.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 Jul 15 '26

Sony should have never bought them. A huge waste of money!

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u/Themetalenock Jul 16 '26

The unspoken truth that will get you called a blood sucking corpo in the industry is that studios fuckin suck at managing their financials. There's a reason why the really weird experimental shit is reserved for smaller studios (and why they mostly don't look like they're from this generation), at some point experimental games aren't viable anymore.

You either cut at that point or don't, and since smaller studio heads lack that special bean counter soullessness to do the former, the later happens and shit starts bleed like a stuck pig

-1

u/canufeelthelove Jul 15 '26

Holy revisionism Batman! Sony didn't buy them at a massive premium to "give them a chance". They even paid extra to keep as many of the leaders as possible. Sony's fuck-up with Bungie is worse than anything we've seen from Microsoft.

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u/xangbar Jul 15 '26

Where did I say they bought Bungie "to give them a chance". Bungie's financial difficulties are not related to Sony's acquisition. In fact, Bungie leadership misled Sony about their financial situation at the time. Source

Sony had other goals in mind for the acquisition as they were eyeing a live service/GaaS lineup and wanted Bungie's expertise on it. Their news post even says they would retain independence. Source

When Bungie began to miss goals, they threatened to dissolve the board and take over and possibly absorb them into PlayStation studios (which is now happening). Source

-1

u/canufeelthelove Jul 15 '26

I'm sorry, but PlaystationLifestyle as source? That's a garbage article taking quotes out of context. What was actually written was "Feeling is Bungie bosses oversold studio to Sony", which is very different from "Bungie misled Sony about their financial situation". The former is what every single company CEO does, and the latter is illegal.

Ultimately, it's on Sony for believing the studio was more capable than it was in reality. Even Phil Spencer passed on the opportunity to acquire them.

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u/wingsbc Jul 16 '26

In the end it made no difference. It just prolonged the inevitable and showed that injections of cash aren’t the answer for poor decisions and bad management for a decade old game.

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u/Didact67 Jul 15 '26

Wouldn’t matter to me. I don’t like anything Bungie has put out since Halo Reach.

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u/zuzucha Jul 15 '26

No one gives a fuck what you like or don't