New York, New York - What a start to the year in the gaming industry: Microsoft made waves with its announcement to buy out Activision-Blizzard, and the New York Times snagged Wordle. Now, Sony has announced that it is buying the original studio behind the Halo franchise, Bungie Studios.

In a huge counter to Microsoft's move, Sony bought Bungie Studios for $3.6 billion. According to gamesindustry.biz, the makers of the first Halo games and the looter-shooter Destiny will still be run by Bungie's current CEO Peter Parsons.

Sony has also promised that Bungie will still be able to publish games for the platforms it chooses.

The studio echoed that message in an FAQ containing more details on the change of ownership and insisted that players will not be affected.

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Bungie won't be the last buyout, and it sounds like Sony has its sights set on expanding by gobbling up even more games studios.

Sony CEO Jim Ryan was extremely clear that this is only the beginning.

"We should absolutely expect more. We are by no means done. With PlayStation, we have a long way to go. I will personally be spending a lot of my time with Pete and the team at Bungie, helping make sure that everything beds down right and that autonomy means autonomy. But elsewhere in the organisation, we have many more moves to make."

In a weird twist of fate, the creators of Halo, which was used to launch Microsoft's Xbox, are now part of the company that makes the PlayStation.