They need money so i don't blame them for how they went about it at all.
what's wrong with their content releases?
Is this going to be one of those compared to Fortnite moments.
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Marty O’Donnell has shed some light on Activison x Bungie’s relationship and what went wrong
- Thread starter Strakt
- Start date
what's wrong with their content releases?
Is this going to be one of those compared to Fortnite moments.
Didn't their partnership get announced the same day that Activision lost the court case where they were intentionally withholding royalties from their employees? Who could've seen it turning south, except everyone.
Ah, it was clear some kind of fuckery was afoot with Activision, even if Bungie's employees wouldn't admit it.
Imagine where Bungie would be with better leadership.
Imagine where Bungie would be with better leadership.
From what Marty said, they were quite aware, but since they were legally obligated to not mess with the studio, and they were kinda traumatized by Microsoft (Which I kinda get, you work 10 years on something and its one of the biggest franchises in entertainment and you dont own it) they hoped for the best. Which obviosly didnt happen.
I don't think it was a wrong move to start a partnership with Activision. They poured, or at least had planned to pour like five hundred million dollars into Destiny.
It was obvious that Bungie didn't know how to develop a loot-based online RPG and if I remember correctly, it was the Diablo guys who helped them to fix the game and release The Taken King. Having the help of Blizzard and other Activision studios was certainly a merit of working with them.
Although, I believe it was Activision's push to release a sequel called Destiny 2 that ruined everything.
In the new blog post released by Bungie after revealing their future plans for Destiny, it's mentioned that releasing Destiny 2 was a mistake and that actually set them back for more than a year on their original plans. They didn't want to split the players by releasing another game, and that's the plan right now: to keep updating Destiny 2 forever and bring Destiny 1 content in it too. I think they plan to merge both games in the future and go back to their original idea for the game: one game, called Destiny, updated and kept alive for years. Kinda like World of Warcraft or something.
Activision is repeating the same mistake with Overwatch 2. Their push to release standalone sequels is definitely not helping. I remember Jeff Kaplan saying in the Overwatch 2 announce video that he had to fight hard to keep the pvp part the same in both games, while making sure that the sequel is appealing enough to be sold as a new product.
Bungie did the right thing. They don't have the marketing push of Activision, and maybe that's why we're not hearing about Destiny as much as before, but I'm pretty sure Destiny is successful enough to fund other enormous projects at Bungie.
It was obvious that Bungie didn't know how to develop a loot-based online RPG and if I remember correctly, it was the Diablo guys who helped them to fix the game and release The Taken King. Having the help of Blizzard and other Activision studios was certainly a merit of working with them.
Although, I believe it was Activision's push to release a sequel called Destiny 2 that ruined everything.
In the new blog post released by Bungie after revealing their future plans for Destiny, it's mentioned that releasing Destiny 2 was a mistake and that actually set them back for more than a year on their original plans. They didn't want to split the players by releasing another game, and that's the plan right now: to keep updating Destiny 2 forever and bring Destiny 1 content in it too. I think they plan to merge both games in the future and go back to their original idea for the game: one game, called Destiny, updated and kept alive for years. Kinda like World of Warcraft or something.
Activision is repeating the same mistake with Overwatch 2. Their push to release standalone sequels is definitely not helping. I remember Jeff Kaplan saying in the Overwatch 2 announce video that he had to fight hard to keep the pvp part the same in both games, while making sure that the sequel is appealing enough to be sold as a new product.
Bungie did the right thing. They don't have the marketing push of Activision, and maybe that's why we're not hearing about Destiny as much as before, but I'm pretty sure Destiny is successful enough to fund other enormous projects at Bungie.
Between pushing bright dust, season passes and expansion costs the monetization put the game into the F2P area, even before it went F2P.
There is nothing wrong with their content, per say, but the way they monetize it is pretty scummy. It definitely reeks of something an EA or Activision would do. It also proves that it isn't always the publishers that are the problem with these games.
Where else would they make their money?
have you played a EA or Activision game where they loot box things that actually impact the game? Emotes aren't impacting the game neither are ugly sparrows and ships.
They stuck the landing on H3, so I think people gave it a pass. I do remember there being some discussion around the dev crunch. It was a different time and even though I'm not in the games industry, I was also doing regular death marches getting software out the door.
I still love Bungie even though they are flawed, and hope they figure out how to feel independent and still put out high quality content.
I enjoy and have played Destiny since the series launched and yeah i'd agree these things were not well received across the community. Another big thing after the Activision split the PC version has had a lot of errors/issues. When they were partnered the PC version ran smooth.
Ehhhh looking how Destiny has performed this gen vs Halo I'm sure Microsoft have some regrets of their own.
I can't even imagine what state destiny would have been had it not had activision money and studios thrown at it. Their content pipeline is anemic.
The heads of bungie signed a contract and repeatedly failed to deliver games on time, costing the owners their millions in bonuses. I'm not surprised they regretted it now.
The heads of bungie signed a contract and repeatedly failed to deliver games on time, costing the owners their millions in bonuses. I'm not surprised they regretted it now.
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Irrelevant lol, its still one of the biggest games being played on all platforms.
I'm saying that they seemed to partner well. Not that Microsoft was amazing in it all.
I can imagine Halo: CE's development being rough as that was during the acquisition, Halo 2 is a known quantity of disastrous development (due to Bungie overestimating the original Xbox and having to scrap it at the last second and start over), and I haven't heard of development being rough for Halo 3/ODST/Reach.
It also doesn't seem like Bungie viewed Microsoft as a bad partner if they considered returning as well as the fact that a good number of employees stayed with Microsoft under 343i or returned in a different capacity.
The issue always seemed to be about independence/retaining IP for them as a studio.
I would also say as it is now, the Bungie of now isn't as good as the one before a lot of them left after the split and during the deal with Activision.
Since Bungie wanted independence, it wasn't a right fit for them to be under Microsoft during that time — and I think Microsoft realized that when they allowed Bungie to buy its independence — but it's clear Activision was not the way to go. Microsoft probably wanted to only deal with studios it owned too, but the ideal partnership would have been Bungie independent with Microsoft publishing.
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Letting a first party studio retain ownership over a massive ip like Destiny would have been a massive mistake.
iirc, Bungie was also upset that they did not own Halo. And well, they left Microsoft. Can you imagine if Microsoft couldn't make any more Halo games at all despite their investment in the franchise since Halo 1?
None of this stuff is unique to MS either. Does anyone think it would be a good idea to let Insomniac retain the Spider-Man video game rights? No.
You would be surprised what you need to do in order to keep the lights on.
You're presuming that Destiny would have been just as big a deal if it was exclusive. Reality is that a huge aspect of Destiny's draw was that it was a new IP "from the creators of Halo", "For the first time on Playstation", which Activision then instantiated with one of the most expensive marketing campaigns in gaming history.
I don't know, this reads a bit like someone is complaining about their boss making them do do work they didnt really wanna do. I like Destiny, and play it currently, so i really hope they can now do what they want to do, and can also deliver good expansions on their own.
So is there any actual content in the video? Because those bullet points are a bunch of vagaries that say next to nothing about "what went wrong".
Also, for the record:
Also, for the record:
- Destiny was better under Activision.
- I'd rather have D3 than three more years of D2. Some of Destiny's best story/content is going to be wasted being bolted onto D2.
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All of this sounds about right and I don't blame anybody whether that's Bungie, Microsoft, or Activision. Bungie deserved some degree of freedom after Halo and clearly wanted it. Activision was right in wanting to keep a close leash on a $500 million dollar project that Bungie fucked up the development for. Microsoft was probably too greedy in that they should have agreed to partial ownership but I imagine they wanted certain guarantees from Bungie that Bungie didnt want to give.
I agree it would have been a hard sell to let the developer keep the IP. I'm surprised Activision was willing to play ball.
But the implication from the other post was Bungie regretted leaving Microsoft and wanted to come crawling back, which doesn't seem like a good read on the situation!
Does anyone know if they've fixed their development pipeline? I remember with Destiny 1 the word is that it was excruciatingly slow to build new content.
Bungie went independent from Microsoft in the first place to have freedom to do what they want and to avoid higher up corporate interference, so signing up with Activision for such a long contract with so many set milestones was always a little baffling.
It didn't help that the development of Destiny was extremely messy as well. When you are contractually obligated to pump out content but your content pipeline sucks because your tools suck...it's easy to see the friction there.
It didn't help that the development of Destiny was extremely messy as well. When you are contractually obligated to pump out content but your content pipeline sucks because your tools suck...it's easy to see the friction there.
The original leaked documents from the Zampella/Activision suit before we even knew what Destiny was showed a contractual planned release schedule of sequels, I don't think the original plan was to never make a sequel.
IIRC the original stated release schedule was a Game->Expansion->Game->expansion on repeat.
That's where the whole 10 year plan meme came from in the first place.
I really don't think any of the information regarding bungie/Microsoft is new.
I'm pretty sure Bungie wished it had retained ownership over Halo at the time, and left Microsoft specifically to have ownership over whatever they made next.
People think they left because Microsoft wanted them to make Halo exclusively for the rest of time, but I don't think that was ever really implied. Bungie just wanted more independence. But, if you're paying a studio to make games for you, you need to lock down the IP.
As someone else itt said, I'm sure MS regrets not locking down ownership over Gears of War earlier because it probably cost them quite a bit to buy the ip this generation.
Given that O'Donnell has a visible predilection for, shall we say, politics of the Trumpian variety, I'm going to take this with a pinch of salt until corroborated.
Not to mention it was one of the first next-gen FPS. People were starving for that.
Even before Bungie branched off, Microsoft had 343i so I very much doubt MS would have locked them into making Halo sequels indefinitely if Bungie really didn't want to. It was more about Bungie wanting IP ownership which is more than fair.
Sony demands ownership of IP too when they work with external devs, some examples are Dark Cloud, Rogue Galaxy, Heavy Rain, Beyond, Detroit, The Order, Housmarque Stuff, Demon Souls, Ratchet and Clank, Death Stranding, etc.
Idk why any of this is hard to believe. It really just sounds like confirmation of stuff that's been leaking out since 2014.
What's kind of weird is that Microsoft made a deal with Insomniac that let Insomniac keep the Sunset Overdrive IP - I don't think Sony was willing to make that deal, otherwise they probably would have partnered with Sony again.
So I don't see why they wouldn't have done that for Bungie given the previous history. It's obvious that Microsoft didn't do that, but just seems weird/shortsighted of them not to be willing to partner with Bungie in that way.
I think Ori may be owned by Microsoft, but I don't think Cuphead is, so there's another example too.
It is still slow because they're still bolting onto the old engine they've been using since, apparently, halo reach. The tools have been notably difficult to use to make new content, too.
Honestly as a massive Destiny fan: I don't believe him. Straight up, this is just him trying to pass the buck when they don't deserve to.
Bungie themselves have constantly made boneheaded decisions throughout Destiny's history, to the point it almost looks like they're trying to sabotage themselves.
A lot of people probably thought with the Activision split that there was hope Bungie would just go up and up. But nope, they've continued to make boneheaded decisions. They've continued to make scummier and scummier moves.
This is not on Activision Marty, this is now all on Bungie.
And let's be honest, from the bits and pieces we've heard Marty was a dickhead to work with sooo..
Bungie themselves have constantly made boneheaded decisions throughout Destiny's history, to the point it almost looks like they're trying to sabotage themselves.
A lot of people probably thought with the Activision split that there was hope Bungie would just go up and up. But nope, they've continued to make boneheaded decisions. They've continued to make scummier and scummier moves.
This is not on Activision Marty, this is now all on Bungie.
And let's be honest, from the bits and pieces we've heard Marty was a dickhead to work with sooo..
Destiny 2 looks and plays bloody brilliant. It's just.. everything else that has issues, or is just a baffling ordeal.
They've laid their cards on the table now though across the next 3 years of expansions. No excuses now, really. If Bungie have ideas about Destiny 2 that differ from what they were able to do under Activision, now is the time to deliver.
Honestly, I still think this all ends up with Bungie and MS back together sooner or later.
They've laid their cards on the table now though across the next 3 years of expansions. No excuses now, really. If Bungie have ideas about Destiny 2 that differ from what they were able to do under Activision, now is the time to deliver.
Honestly, I still think this all ends up with Bungie and MS back together sooner or later.
What i never understood, why in the hell did Microsoft let Bungie go? Didn't Bungie belong to Microsoft? Wouldn't any new IP that Bungie created belong automatically to Microsoft?
Cuphead wasn't published by Xbox Game Studios, the game was self published by MDHR. Deals in microsoft are strange though, cuphead and ori beign on switch and not Playstation, I don't think sony would allow anything like that, yes SF V i'm watching you.
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How is it "always a smaller content year" when there's literally only been one Year 3 in the Destiny franchise before this and it wasn't even looked at as a bad year? lol
Lack of content is only one aspect of this year. The quality of the content has been the biggest issue. The seasonal format becoming far too FOMO to the point of hurting the enjoyment of the game is another.
Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo: Reach all had substantially smoother development periods than Halo or Halo 2. None of them had last-minute reboots or any huge cuts. Halo 2 was the only Bungie Halo game that really got rebooted and that was over a year before it shipped.
They wanted them to keep making Halo and Bungie wanted to do something new.
I'm guessing Microsoft figured that they could keep Bungie, but Bungie is no better than the people who make it up, so why not offer the employees at Bungie who want to stay to stay and continue to work on Halo (or work in other capacities) and just let Bungie itself go so they don't cause a mass exodus of employees.
i don't think it was acrimonious/or a "break up" each had their own respective plans post halo. i dunno if bungie floated Desitny or the base concept to MS though
This is purely fantasy, but I feel like Halo could have done well if MS let Bungie have the development rights and let it go multiplatform. Microsoft could have put in a "Halo tax" to the separation agreement where they continue to get some royalties for it so they basically would be getting paid for doing practically nothing. Microsoft could have also asked for an agreement to have Bungie work on a new IP exclusively to them (maybe even Destiny) that could have been a launch title for the Xbox One.
Wonder how the MS meeting would have gone different if they dealt with the Nadella/Phil/Booty MS instead of the mess that was around 2010-2013
was always baffled how they wanted independance and then signed with Acti of all places tho like damn
was always baffled how they wanted independance and then signed with Acti of all places tho like damn
easily. forsaken may have benefited from the fact that D2Y1 was pretty subpar overall but when you put it next to shadowkeep and the seasons of chores we have received in Y3, Y2 really makes Y3 look terrible. Not as bad as Y1 of course but you expect a game to get better and better over time, not sputter over time. case in point is that the clan functionality we had on PC with bnet has still not been fixed since the move to steam. worked day 1 but now with most of Y3 over, it's broken.