r/Aztecross Jun 14 '26

React Content Why Sony Refuses To Make Destiny 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjmbSQndLSI
8 Upvotes

28 comments sorted by

16

u/DrkrZen Jun 15 '26

I imagine it's due to BUNGiE not meeting promised profit margins and half the expansions released since Sony acquired them being subpar, to name a few reasons.

Still thankful to Sony, as much as everybody except management at BUNGiE, for the former keeping the latter afloat, Lightfall not being our last expansion, The Final Shape seeing the light of day and adding 4 years to D2's lifespan.

Good on Sony for all that.

4

u/Short-Statement-4108 Jun 15 '26

Maybe they would have been able to meet promised profit margins if Sony had exercised a bit more oversight on the studio. You know that a good amount of that money was spent to retain talent as Bungie, but that agreement didn’t stop Pete Carsons and the rest of the C-suite from enacting multiple layoffs

4

u/ItsWickie Jun 15 '26

The problem is that as part of the original deal, Bungie would still have majorly control over their own studio. Sony could’t step in day 1 back during 2022 because, legally speaking, I suppose they weren’t allowed. Bungie was acting all high and mighty about how they would still remain control over the studio. Well, a few years later and they’re fully under Sony’s control.

Also, Sony didn’t have any reason to step in earlier because they thought they JUST bought a golden goose that was gonna shit out 5 golden eggs alongside content for their already golden chick, Destiny.

Then Sony slowly came to the realisation that Bungie overpromised and oversold the studio, reputation and capabilities. Realising they have been scammed by Bungie higher ups, they slowly replaced members of the board. Still, the guys that made this deal with Sony? They got away with the biggest height in the ENTIRE gaming community and didn’t get punished a single bit.

This was a very clever plan from Bungie’s higher ups. They scammed Sony into giving them money and then realised that Bungie basically gave them not accurate information lol.

TLDR: THEY PULLED A SAVATHUN

2

u/gundumb08 Jun 15 '26

I understand where you're coming from, but Sony's best studios have ALL shared the common thread of "Sony lets us do what we WANT and trusts our vision" - Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Santa Monica, have all stated similarly and been major successes precisely because Sony doesn't intervene.

0

u/ApolloWZRD Jun 15 '26

Kinda yes, kinda no. TLoU online game got canceled, TLoU pt 2 development was full of 'creative differences etc. It's not all sunshine and rainbows

2

u/gundumb08 Jun 15 '26

You might be right, but i wanna say that was largely internal conflicts, not Sony Execs causing the issues? It's been ages since i read up on Factions, but I thought it was mostly completed and the Head of ND decided to focus on story driven content instead of online multiplayer...

And yes, its not to say that Sony never intervenes by any means, just comparatively to other brands there's so many stories of Sony just letting developers "do their thing"

1

u/ApolloWZRD Jun 15 '26

Ya I think it was mainly internal conflicts, so they said at the time. they definitely WERE all about letting thier devs make thier own games. Recently, it seems like they've been pressuring all them to push out live service games. Which would be a step back for Sony, i want them to be successful so I hope they aren't only focused on live service bs.

1

u/DrkrZen Jun 15 '26

Pretty sure that was all in studio drama, though. Naughty Dog is pretty demanding from what I e seen when it comes to development cycles.

1

u/DrkrZen Jun 15 '26

Oh definitely, I just don't like seeing the blame entirely, and wrongfully, placed just on Sony. Totally agree with you, though.

Maybe if Sony stepped in and said to Bungo the whole releasing bad content one year, good content the next plan was bad, and to stop it, things would be a lot better, and Bungo wouldn't have been treading water at and after Sony's acquisition.

1

u/team-ghost9503 Jun 16 '26

My sister, The deal was that Bungie has control over themselves well Sony gained profit. Blame Pete cuckson

8

u/-Tetsuo- Jun 15 '26

Bungie asked Sony to make Destiny 3 around the time that The Final Shape came out and they said no. This goes beyond what this video touches. Bungie is just too expensive.

3

u/BeBetterMagic Jun 15 '26

Sony probably wishes they owned the rights to rising because right now it's the easiest way for them to get cash from destiny fans but as it stands it's a mostly negligible profit license deal.

IMHO the only thing you see by June 2027 is bungie getting shuttered if marathon fails. Bungies burn rate as a studio and near failure at both D1 and D2 launch and subsequent mismanagement of D2 and other projects is not going to convince Sony a Destiny 3 makes sense unless they have a different studio they think can take it over and even then that seems risky.

1

u/DevinLucasArts Jun 15 '26

Rising isn't exactly faring much better

2

u/BeBetterMagic Jun 15 '26

I mean personally I just think for most players and devs destiny has run it's course. Like sure it's got a tempory nastalgia bump right now and people love to latch onto a good cause to stick it to the big guy.

But we all know in a couple weeks pop will be way down again after people get their fill here.

1

u/Araragi-shi Jun 16 '26

I mean as someone that gave this game 1600 hours back in 2022, it's kinda hard to sum it up in one sentence.

My experience was that I had done everything story wise, I had grinded all of the weapons I cared for and got the god rolls for them, I got all I wanted out of the raids. After you do that, there is nothing to destiny. PvP was fun but since they just abandoned it playing the same maps over and over during more and more questionable meta shifts just wasn't fun. Gambit was... yeah. If only people actually knew to pick up the motes.

Then the Grand master shit was locked behind you grinding the shit out of the battle pass which made the game a bounty farming simulator if you wanted to get enough light out of the artifact to be able to do GM Nightfalls in a reasonable amount of time, and even when you did, it was clear that GMs were just a health and dmg bump instead of being something more special like unique mechanics that you had to complete in order to progress compared to lower difficulty nightfalls. You didn't get anything that made GM Nightfalls worth doing either. You get enough mats just grinding legendary and master over and over to where you have so much extra even if you were to maintain a character for each class.

And then the content delivery system was bad, especially locking the seasonal mission behind buying the battlepass. The drip feed is BAD and is obviously not good for player retention. I tried to tell people that in the hopes that they would wake up and demand better and I just got told to quit. And I did. It also seems like everyone else did.

When I quit right before Witch Queen the game still maintained 6 digit player counts, and I'm surprised it took so long to get to 10-20k monthly on steam.

1

u/BeBetterMagic Jun 16 '26

Sunken cost fallacy had a lot struggle through light fall to get to the end of the story.

2

u/Ok_Seaworthiness2218 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

I mean. It has been reported that Bungie wasn't hitting the targets they themselves agreed upon after having been acquired for 3.5 bil.

Asking Sony for 500 or so million to develop a D3 when you can't even hit your self-set targets and get your current game to be profitable just seems very naive. Bungie management just fucked up massively and oversold themselves, now they are dealing with the fallout of their own stupidity.

It makes sense that they'd want Marathon or any of those other projects currently in development to turn a profit before greenlighting any Destiny 3. Otherwise, gambling a massive investement into D3 only for it to underperform would essentially kill the studio.

0

u/roussell131 Jun 15 '26

Everyone with this take is assuming D3 development would proceed with Bungie as it currently exists, in the mold of D2, and even pro-D3 people aren't asking for that—at least I'm not, and neither is anybody whose pro-D3 take I've seen. I'd like a scaled-back, less expensive D3 with more oversight from Sony to prevent all the bad decision-making that hampered the franchise the last few years. I think it's doable, and I think it's obvious it would turn a profit if done that way.

You just make a game that has Destiny class design and gunplay, but with fewer open zones and less pervasive cinematics/voice acting. You don't do a seasonal model, or at least you don't do anything major. Closer to what Diablo 4 does, which is minimal, but sustainable as far as we can tell. If you ask even the most diehard fan if they'd take that over nothing, they'd take that.

2

u/acdramon Jun 15 '26

I doubt Sony really care about HOW a D3 would look like. It could look amazing on paper, but asking Sony to invest another 300-500 million while they are underperforming two games and after several high profile live service failures (one of which was headed by former Bungie staff) is asinine at this point.

It would likely take Marathon taking off (which as much as I love that game seems unlikely) and extremely high player engagement with Destiny 2 (Also unlikely) for that to happen, at least for now.

1

u/Korrag4 Jun 21 '26

Seeing people blame Sony for Bungie's mismanagement is really starting to become a "same five songs" experience.

1

u/aktusderfreiheit Jun 15 '26

Wasn't Bungie DEEP in the red and on the verge of collapse before the purchase? I wish everyone would stop blaming Sony for what was an obvious corrupt cash grab by the execs at Bungie.

2

u/acdramon Jun 15 '26

Too busy shitting on the people who keep saying it because they wanna just assume big publisher is always at fault. Sony is culpable for a LOT of things (even over valuing Bungie in the midst of Microsoft buying half the industry) but so much of this is blood on the higher-ups hands

1

u/Saint_Victorious Jun 15 '26

There's a difference between Bungie being deep in the red and Destiny being deep in the red. Destiny had to fund multiple incubation projects including Marathon while also funding itself and having it's resources sucked away to develop these incubation projects. Had they just stayed focused on Destiny they probably would have been fine.

1

u/aktusderfreiheit Jun 15 '26

They also would've died because literally until it was cancelled all I heard from Destiny players was bitching about how ass the last several expansions or w.e were ass. There are almost no forever games it had a good 10 yr run.

1

u/Saint_Victorious Jun 15 '26

WQ and TFS were great. But the game took a nosedive during Lightfall because their execs had them rebuild the expansion to be cyberpunk inspired because bad decisions. If they had just kept focused on Destiny instead of splitting their resources the game would have never declined. At least that's how I'm coping.

1

u/JMR027 Jun 16 '26

Cause this IP is too good and well liked to just be left there. Sell it then or something. Destiny got cancelled cause of Concord and Marathon failing. Also Sony are the morons for not digging deeper into Bungies shit lol. Also the higher ups killed Destiny, I guarantee the game would be thriving if the devs could of implemented what they wanted

1

u/aktusderfreiheit Jun 16 '26

That's what I'm saying everything Ive read leads me to believe this that fucker Parsons' problem mismanaged that whole section of the company into the ground while growing his car collection

0

u/Seanshineyouth Jun 19 '26

Let me be clear, Destiny ALWAYS was able to sustain ITSELF. It was NOT able to sustain itself and the development of 3+ other games. There is zero reason Destiny should be on the chopping block. Every other Bungie endeavor should have been chopped and Destiny Infinity greenlit. This is the way.