Why Exactly Did Sony Buy Bungie?

It has been a sensational month for gaming news in general, with Sony topping it off by completing the acquisition of Bungie for a reported fee of $3.6 billion (£3 billion).

This came just weeks after Microsoft completed the biggest purchase in history by buying out Activision Blizzard, the creators of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, for almost $70 billion (£58.3 billion).

Some have said that the Japanese gaming giants have made this purchase in response to their American competitors, with both PlayStation and Xbox continuing to go head-to-head on the market.

Sony revealed that Bungie will be an "independent subsidiary" of Sony and will remain a multiplatform studio, with the option open to them of self-publishing to "reach players wherever they choose to play" (via PlayStation.Blog).

This means that there will be no PlayStation exclusives at this time, but there is no ruling out that this stance could change, depending on what Microsoft do with Activision titles.

Bungie's biggest game by far is Destiny, which continues to possess a seismic player base to this day. They were also responsible for every Halo game right up until Reach in September 2010. 

It seems baffling that Sony have the rights to a gaming series that was arguably the catalyst for the Xbox in the early-2000s - but this is where the industry is right now! If someone told you 10 years ago this would be the state of gaming, you would have probably told them to stop dreaming.

While there is no definitive reason in regards to why Sony bought out Bungie, several theories have been presented regarding what this means in the immediate future.

Gaming writer Alanah Pearce believes that this is not a response to what happened with Microsoft and Blizzard,