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The main keys to the breakup of Bungie and Activision

The main keys to the breakup of Bungie and Activision - Ultimate Guide

By
Jonathan Martinez
2019-01-11 15:09:06




The relationship between Bungie and Activision has lasted eight years. Gone is that handshake in 2010 with the signing of Los Angeles when the romance with Microsoft came to an end. An apparently friendly and conciliatory statement has sealed the independence of a Bungie seeking a future where they will be total holders of its current IP, Destiny, which will maintain the commitment to its huge community. But the future is yet to be seen.

In this article we are going to review the three main factors that have conditioned the end of a coexistence whose stability had been faltering for months ... or perhaps years.

Sales: the accounts did not come out 


The main factor is clearly the sales factor. Although the invoicing of Destiny 2 has been satisfactory during this fall - we remember that in September it billed more than Marvel's Spider-Man and Fortnite: Battle Royale -, Activision itself declared in November that it was dissatisfied with the commercial performance of such an expensive videogame.

Cody Johnson, the company's head of operations, was blunt and did not beat around the bush in an interview: "Some of our franchises like Destiny are not performing as well as we would like." To that he added that "We have not yet seen the total commitment of the players with Destiny 2, which has led us to perform below expectations to date today. Some players are in 'wait mode' ". This statement, no matter how you look at it, was nothing more than a slap on the head for Bungie, an indirect warning that things had to change in order not to precipitate aggressive measures.

The idea of ​​both in this final stretch of the year materialized in different days and free weekends on all platforms, a clear sign of the need for new players that, in the long run, would become buyers of Destiny 2. Not even the Game offer on PlayStation Plus at no additional cost for a whole month served to keep sales of the work at the top for more than a few days





Fall in Activision shares 


Not all the intellectual properties of Activision work like Call of Duty. Although there are voices that put the end of the war saga in the short term, the fact is that the license lives a great time to have managed to reinvent its business model to compensate for more than a certain decrease in net sales of the current titles generation.

Although Black Ops 4 is not the most sold, it is one of the most money generated in recent times. The result? A franchise that exceeds the box office revenue of the entire Star Wars movie saga and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There is nothing.

The problem also came in November, when the news broke from Yahoo Finance that the actions of the American giant had fallen by 7% in recent dates. Knowing that the problem was not Call of Duty, that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy remains one of the best sellers in the main markets and that Blizzard IPs play in another league, far from problems for now, it seems clear that the main problem had name and surnames: Destiny and Bungie, which goes back to the previous point.







Greater dedication to Blizzard 


Yes, Blizzard is different, it knows how to be self-sufficient, but its video games are so globally successful that they also carry great costs. Activision has been unsettling for a long time. Hundreds of employees, dozens of departments and more and more productions that go beyond the video game, because both Overwatch and World of Warcraft are above all phenomena in the transmedia market.

The sales pipeline for 2019 is in this division, that of the Irvine, California company. If all the economic capital currently invested in Bungie could be allocated to Blizzard, it was a matter of time that would end up happening if the situation in the Crucible did not go back.

In fact, we can support this argument with Bungie's own statement announcing its independence: "With our remarkable Destiny community, we are prepared to publish on our own, while Activision will focus more on their own IP."

This is the most decisive factor: Bungie cost a lot of money, a capital that Activision has had to move to the Californian terrain.





Finally, it is worth noting that Activision has undergone changes since it started in 2019. This week we knew that a change of roles had taken place among the company's top management. Thus, Rob Kostich, general sales manager and head of Call of Duty, became the new president. For his part, who until now had been King's financial and strategy director, Humam Sakhnini, would now be the new president of the same. Finally, Activision's CFO, Dennis Durkin, signed as business president

We are not going to speculate: we do not know what will happen to Bungie now. According to its statement, we understand that the will is to supply itself independently, look out of the corner of the eye at companies such as Digital Extremes and the Warframe phenomenon, which with its free nature and constant coverage of both content and community, has managed to stand for more than five years. years. And the best seems to be coming now that is available on all platforms of the current generation.

Some people believe that Destiny should become free-to-play; others, on the other hand, believe that it is best to sell to the highest bidder. Only the future will tell what happens with Destiny and what happens with a Bungie that has in its hand reinvent itself.

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video game, gameplay, price, 60fps, steam


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