Bellevue, Washington, Feb. 1 (BUS): Playstation maker Sony is stepping up its competition with Xbox maker Microsoft by acquiring the video game studio behind a successful Xbox game.
Sony Interactive Entertainment said Monday it will spend $3.6 billion to acquire Bungie Inc. , an independent game publisher based in Bellevue, Washington. Bungie makes the popular game franchise Destiny and was the original developer of Xbox-owned Halo, AP reports.
Microsoft bought Bungie in 2000, but later separated from the game studio in 2007 while retaining the intellectual property rights to the Halo series.
Sony is one of the world’s largest video game companies, but Microsoft has ramped up its gaming ambitions, most recently announcing plans to buy popular game publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Acquiring the owner of titles like Call of Duty and Candy Crush would immediately put Microsoft ahead of Nintendo as the third-largest game company in global sales, behind Japan’s Sony and Chinese tech giant Tencent.
“We’ve learned a lot” since the Bungie ditched, Xbox Chief Executive Officer Phil Spencer told the Axios news site last year. On Monday, Spencer tweeted his congratulations to PlayStation for “adding a talented team” to its game studios.
Bungie started in Chicago in 1991 and had its early hits, like Myth and Marathon, for PC. It now employs about 900 people and is headquartered not far from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Sony’s video game division is based in San Mateo, California.