The Bungie departure from Activision earlier this year was a shocker. The developer revealed that they ditched the publisher after over six years with them and took Destiny with like a bad divorce. Activision has not spoken up about the situation since it happened but yesterday during a financial conference call for investors, COO Coddy Johnson explained the rationale behind the decision. He believed that it was the right path for both parties involved.
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“Bungie gets to focus on the IP that they created, and we get to focus on our biggest opportunities and on our biggest franchises with our best resources.”
He added that the move was rooted in Activision’s overall strategy and that while they did not own the Destiny IP, the game was not meeting their financial expectations.
“As we went through the end of the year and our financial planning for 2019, it indicated that Destiny would not have been a material contributor to operating income to our business.”.
Activision then tried to make it seem like it was not a financial decision by saying that they had internal resources working on the game and by letting it go they could free this up to work on other things and speed up development with other titles.
They stressed that it was a mutual decision for both parties which makes sense as Activision was putting a lot of pressure on Bungie to deliver higher financial results from the game.
