Many members of the gaming community are surprised by Sony's acquisition of Bungie. Given that Bungie was the studio that developed the first several installments in the Halo series, which would later become Xbox's flagship series, the purchase of Bungie by Xbox's direct competitor, Sony, is not without a certain sense of irony. Although, the recent trend of studio acquisitions by big-name publishers could have a potential, negative impact on the gaming community at large.

While Bungie now joins the several other second-party development studios under Sony's umbrella, such as Insomniac Games, Sucker Punch, and Santa Monica Studio, this could potentially lead to console exclusive games being much more prominent than they already are within the gaming community. Console exclusivity has been par for the course since the 80s, but as players have expanded to different platforms, the accessibility of certain games has gotten a lot harder in recent years.

RELATED: Head of Xbox Congratulates Bungie and PlayStation After Acquisition Announcement

A Reddit user named ghostliving posted an image of every studio that Sony has acquired over the years, including the recent addition of Bungie. Of those studios listed within the image, barely any of them have produced a game that has been released outside any Sony platform. In fairness, some games produced by these second-party studios, such as Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War, have made their way onto PC, but those are some of the only major exceptions.

Not to say that players might one day see a PC port of games like The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, or Marvel's Spider-Man, but considering just how much importance has been placed on console exclusivity as a way to sell systems, it seems fairly unlikely at this point in time. While Bungie has stated that the studio will continue to focus on cross-platform support, it's hard to know what future Bungie titles might look like.

Destiny 2 fans might not have anything to worry about, but should Bungie release a more single-player oriented experience in the future, in the same vein as the original Halo games or the first Destiny installment, there's a distinct possibility that future IPs could be centralized to PlayStation. Though, as of right now, it's hard to know how Sony plans to utilize Bungie going forward.

It's amazing how commonplace studio acquisitions have become at this point. Back in 2020, Microsoft shocked the gaming community with its acquisition of Bethesda Softworks. This in turn, led to similar concerns amongst Bethesda fans, especially when it was announced that Starfield would be an Xbox exclusive. In terms of Bungie and Sony, it's still too early to tell, but it's certainly possible that Bungie might go down a similar road as Bethesda.

MORE: Destiny 2: How to Sword Skate with Half-Truths