Bungie Outright Denies Microsoft Acquisition Speculation

"This is false"

Jeff Grubb has been the story of the summer, which perhaps says a lot about Sony and Microsoft’s own next-gen marketing strategies. The Venture Beat journalist has popped up in approximately one billion articles this year, providing insider teases on internal industry affairs. The latest rumour, which Eurogamer.net has since supported, suggests that Microsoft has been in talks to acquire Destiny developer Bungie – but it’s not true, according to the organisation.

Speaking as part of his GamesBeat podcast, Grubb revealed that he’d “heard” the Xbox division had been sniffing around the studio, but the companies had not been able to agree on a sale price. As mentioned above, Eurogamer.net’s own sources have “corroborated” the story. Although, responding to a post about the rumour on Twitter, Bungie boss Pete Parsons said that it was “false”. There’s some debate over which part of the speculation the developer is actually denying.

To be honest, we wouldn’t be surprised if conversations had taken place, but Bungie obviously is a firm that values its independence. After all, it developed the Halo franchise as a Microsoft subsidiary, before entering into a relationship with Activision that it also worked its way out of. The firm obviously needs finances to sustain itself, but it appears to prefer operating on its own terms, so we’d be surprised if it got acquired unless it’s in particularly dire straits.

[source youtube.com, via eurogamer.net, twitter.com]