Games By Russell Holly Sep. 17, 2014 4:55 pm
It’s not hard to imagine a situation in which the folks at Bungie decided that they would rather court Sony after such a long relationship with Microsoft. The Halo franchise had not only been tethered to Microsoft exclusively, but was also limited to just the Xbox and Xbox 360 after the release of Halo 2. It wouldn’t be hard to believe that Bungie would actively pursue a scenario in which Sony was the larger partner in the launch of their next big game, and that has been one of the most vocal theories in the past year when many folks in the game industry were asked why Sony was getting so much love in the Destiny launch. As it turns out, this wasn’t the case at all. In fact, a recent unsealing of court documents has revealed that the original contract between Activision and Bungie listed Microsoft as the largest beneficiary of the Destiny launch.
A lot has changed since the folks at Bungie and Activision signed a contract for Destiny. Sony became the launch partner for the Destiny after being the first console with an open beta for the game, with a one year exclusive on a ton of in-game content sitting at the top of a long list of bonus material. On top of this, Microsoft wasn’t even allowed to release commercials for Destiny on the Xbox One in some markets.
Oh right, and then there’s Destiny Edition PS4. While the general assumption so far had been that Sony delivered a bank vault to the Activision offices to secure these exclusives, nothing had ever been confirmed. We still don’t have details confirming a financial transaction between Sony and Activision, but after looking at the original contract for Destiny it is clear a significant arrangement was made.
Destiny was originally slated for the Xbox 360, as a temporary exclusive that would eventually become available to the Xbox One followed by PS3/PS4 and the PC. That clearly isn’t how any of this went down, as the game didn’t even launch until well after the next generation consoles had hit the market and there’s still no confirmation that we’ll ever see a PC version of the game. W
hile there can be no doubt that Destiny is significantly better on the newer consoles, one can only imagine that the agreement between Sony and Activision had to have been truly significant in order for such a 180 to have been pulled after the initial contracts were signed.
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A lot has changed since the folks at Bungie and Activision signed a contract for Destiny. Sony became the launch partner for the Destiny after being the first console with an open beta for the game, with a one year exclusive on a ton of in-game content sitting at the top of a long list of bonus material. On top of this, Microsoft wasn’t even allowed to release commercials for Destiny on the Xbox One in some markets.
Oh right, and then there’s Destiny Edition PS4. While the general assumption so far had been that Sony delivered a bank vault to the Activision offices to secure these exclusives, nothing had ever been confirmed. We still don’t have details confirming a financial transaction between Sony and Activision, but after looking at the original contract for Destiny it is clear a significant arrangement was made.
Destiny was originally slated for the Xbox 360, as a temporary exclusive that would eventually become available to the Xbox One followed by PS3/PS4 and the PC. That clearly isn’t how any of this went down, as the game didn’t even launch until well after the next generation consoles had hit the market and there’s still no confirmation that we’ll ever see a PC version of the game. W
hile there can be no doubt that Destiny is significantly better on the newer consoles, one can only imagine that the agreement between Sony and Activision had to have been truly significant in order for such a 180 to have been pulled after the initial contracts were signed.
More...
