14 DAY TRIAL // We don't know what kind of videogame Bungie is planning to create, also set to be published by Activision. We don't know exactly when it will be arriving, although an initial announcement is set to come in 2011. We don't even know whether Bungie is capable of recapturing the magic that led to the creation of the Halo series. What we know is that the Activision-Bungie deal is the talk of the videogames world at the moment and that analysts wasted no time in weighing in on it.
Jesse Divnich, the vice president of analyst services at EEDAR, believes “A Bungie/Activision relationship is a win-win for the entire industry. Bungie retains property and creative rights, Activision is a top-tier publisher, which gets a Bungie game on retail shelves worldwide, and a huge win for consumers, who will finally get a multi-platform IP from the Bungie team.”
The analyst emphasized the fact that Bungie would remain pretty much independent and that the deal was similar to that between Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts.
Meanwhile, Michael Pachter, who is an analyst at Wedbush Morgan, has looked into the future and said that “My guess is that any future Bungie game will sell at least 10 million units, as they will appear on multiple platforms for the first time. As a reference, the typical Halo game made by Bungie sold around 10 million units worldwide over its life at an average retail price of around $50, and these appeared only on the Xbox/Xbox 360.”
Mike Hickey, from Janco Partners, sees the deal between Bungie and Activision as a sign that the publisher is still able to attract top level talent despite the Infinity Ward scandal, while Colin Sebastian, from Lazard Capital Markets, believes the move is especially important for Activision as it allows the publisher to actually move a bit away from Call of Duty as its main revenue stream, diversifying its portfolio.