Microsoft considered buying Bungie again in 2020 before opting for Activision

The Sony and Microsoft acquisitions certainly look different now.

It seems like if Microsoft had made a different decision about which company to buy, things might have turned out very differently today.

As The Verge reports, documents in the FTC vs. Microsoft case (currently under appeal) reveal that Microsoft was considering buying companies other than Activision Blizzard King, including Sega, Hitman studio I|O Interactive, and most notably, Bungie.

Microsoft’s documents described Bungie as “a AAA franchise owner with an established ability to publish and scale games” and stated that “the acquisition of Bungie will include securing valuable intellectual property, Destiny (and its community), and integrating development and operations infrastructure with Xbox Game Studios.”

The Bungie acquisition was really tempting for the company because they mentioned hundreds of hours Destiny played on their platforms. But Microsoft’s documents also indicated they saw a high risk of burn for the studio. That means, simply put, they saw Bungie spending more money than they could possibly recoup.

Microsoft of course bought Bungie back in 2000 to secure Halo be a signature title for the launch of the Xbox console. In 2007, Bungie separated from Microsoft, giving away ownership of Halo to Microsoft. Then they signed a publishing deal with Activision for Destiny franchise in 2010.

In 2019, Bungie ended its deal with Activision in order to sign a new deal with Sony in 2022. And here we return to earlier reports. As we pointed out before the weekend, current Bungie CEO Pete Parsons has already held a leadership position at Bungie since negotiating its exit with Microsoft. He was part of that whole move across publishers.

And over the past week, former Bungie employees have accused Pete of overselling Bungie to Sony. They claim Sony overpaid when it spent $3.6 billion on the studio because it didn’t have the ability to deliver the profits and performance at the scale it promised.

Microsoft spent significantly more on Activision Blizzard King, to the tune of $68.7 billion. But Microsoft’s investment seems to be paying off so far. While Activision Blizzard surprisingly had layoffs shortly after the deal closed, its gaming division has seen profits in recent quarters thanks to the investment.

An interesting detail is that this document was dated a year after Sony announced its plans to buy Bungie. Microsoft and Sony could have entered a bidding war for Bungie, which could have driven up the studio’s purchase price even further.

We won’t have to compare the current situation of Bungie, Activision, Microsoft and Sony, but it’s worth remembering that the history of all four companies is not over and in a few years this could change dramatically for them.