So it looks like Bungie, the legendary game studio behind the even more legendary original HALO franchise, and the… ummm… perhaps somewhat less than legendary Destiny series, has finally been purchased. They were on the market for a while, actually, when the slow-motion train-wreck that is Activision Blizzard let them become an independent publishing outfit.

As most of you probably know by now, Activision Blizzard is now going to become part of the world-eating behemoth that is Microsoft – which, inevitably, means that its games are going to get worse and buggier and stupider and cruftier and more prone to failed updates as the years go by. As if we didn’t have enough reasons to hate both Activision and Microsoft by now…

Yes, admittedly, Microsoft has done quite a lot to salvage HALO with the release of HALO Infinite, no arguments there. But it was 343i’s decision to Call of Duty-fy HALO 5:Guardians that played into said instalment’s generally rather disappointing gameplay.

They’ve now gone and acquired the entire Cawadoody IP, which means that whatever FPS games Mr. Blue-Screen Balls of Death puts out in the future, will likely suffer from the same annoyances as that franchise.

Bungie, on the other hand, which once redefined the entire FPS genre with HALO: Combat Evolved, will now become part of Sony – perhaps the only company anywhere on Earth that can truly resist the BSOD-powered juggernaut:

Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced it will acquire Destiny developer Bungie for $3.6 Billion.

GamesIndustry.Biz reports that following the deal, Bungie will be run as “an independent subsidiary” of SIE, and will remain a multiplatform studio with the option to “self-publish and reach players where they choose to play.”

Bungie is best known as the creators of Halo but since becoming an independent studio have focused their efforts on Destiny, a live-service FPS RPG where players can explore the galaxy as Guardians of Light. The company is also working on a new IP.

“We’ve had a strong partnership with Bungie since the inception of the Destiny franchise, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to officially welcome the studio to the PlayStation family,” says SIE president CEO Jim Ryan.

In the official PlayStation Blog post, Ryan begins by confirming Bungie’s independence. “I want to be very clear to the community that Bungie will remain an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher.” Ryan also says that Bungie will “sit alongside the PlayStation Studios organization,” where the two groups will collaborate.

PlayStation Studios will also gain access to Bungie’s proprietary tools which can be used for PlayStation Studios teams, according to the blog.

A whole lot of software geeks just became very, very rich. Good for them. However, leave it to HALO slayergod Mint Blitz to come up with the best possible spin on the whole thing:

Obviously, that is not real. Microsoft owns the full IP of the HALO franchise – that was part of their agreement when they parted ways with Bungie, 10 years ago. So we have no reason to fear a HALO adaptation for PS5, or whatever.

The question now becomes: what is Destiny‘s destiny? (See what I did there?)

My reaction is probably a lot like yours – “meh, who cares – now let’s go KILL SOME BRUTES IN HALO 2!!!” I’ve played Destiny‘s campaign a grand total of maybe three times in my ENTIRE life. I could never get into it – nothing about it grabbed me by the throat the way that HALO campaigns did.

Still and all, it will be interesting to see what Bungie can do, now that they don’t have the stifling weight of Activision Blizzard’s morally bankrupt and creatively lacklustre culture pressing down on them. Who knows? Maybe they can do great things again. They have some of the best creative minds in the business, and some of the most incredible and storied IP legacies of all time.

I just hope that, whatever they do, they DON’T put out yet another aggressively mediocre FPS-MMO-RPG game that has no idea what it actually is.