Acquiring Bungie will “considerably accelerate” Sony’s multiplatform plans, says PlayStation boss

It was hard to miss the news about Xbox acquiring Activision Blizzard. Likewise, Sony announced that it’s buying Destiny 2 developer Bungie, and while you might say that this was to fire back at Xbox, the deal was actually in the works for 5 or 6 months before now. Sony also has very different plans for implementing Bungie in its existing strategy.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan elaborated on this in an interview with GI.biz. Not only did Ryan confirm that Bungie games will continue to release on multiple platforms outside of PlayStation, but he also spoke to the complementary style of the two companies. “PlayStation’s strength is in the single-player, narrative-rich, stories,” he said. When you compare this to Destiny 2 specifically, you can see how Sony’s single-player exclusives couple nicely with the multiplayer, multiplatform service game that Bungie offers.

It’s those multiple platforms that Sony is after — look at the recent God of War Steam release on PC. “We are starting to go multiplatform,” Ryan continued. “We have an aggressive road map with live services. And the opportunity to work with Bungie is going to considerably accelerate the journey we find ourselves on.” In that sense, the acquisition looks like a win-win for the two companies. Bungie gets the big corporate bucks it needs for its projects, while Sony gets to extend its reach. Ryan has been “talking about increasing the size of the PlayStation community,” and this move directly lines up with that desire.

You can see more evidence of the multiplatform approach with series like MLB The Show 22. The cover athlete and April release date were just revealed, and a look at the box art illustrates what Ryan has been talking about. It features a prominent PlayStation Studios logo — a logo that appears on the Xbox and Nintendo Switch versions of the game too.