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Microsoft Sued Over Mobile Halo Title
GamesIndustry.biz reports on a lawsuit filed by French developer In-Fusio against Microsoft. The company, which specializes in games for moblie phones, was apparently slated to develop a title in the Halo universe. Instead, they've filed suit, claiming that Bungie's parent company refuses to sign off on design documents, holding up the game's overall development process. In return, In-Fusio is now refusing to pay a reported $500,000 to the company. Microsoft sees this as a good time to end the agreement. From the article: "The developer now believes the Xbox manufacturer has purposefully ignored efforts to create a title, stating in the suit: 'Microsoft has thwarted In-Fusio's efforts to develop Halo under the agreement ... Indeed, in the last 11 months, Microsoft has approved no fully developed In-Fusio game designs; ignoring and then refusing to accept In-Fusio's game design concepts with little or no explanation and leaving In-Fusio little basis to revise its concepts to obtain Microsoft's approval.'"
when you dance with the devil?
a greedy monopolistic devil at that.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Apparently, "Your idea is crap," doesn't translate well into French.
The whole pattern sounds familiar. Microsoft teams up with a partner until they learn all of the tricks and then dumps the partner. Shortly after that a new MS product appears.
I can't imagine that Halo would be a particularly fun game to play on a cell phone. Most cells have cludgey controls that translate into a horrible game experience.
Then again, nobody can really judge this because we don't know about the games they were suggesting. MS might have been right in not signing off, the game ideas may really have been that bad. Or In-Fusio might be right about MS ignoring them. Have to wonder where this one will go.
Maybe their designs sucked arse, or maybe MS decided to scrap the whole Mobile Halo idea....
It will be very difficult to TXT every mobile phone user and ask them to not utter the word 'harlo' over the phone without playing the game, in order to ensure the HALO trademark is not misused by being used generically.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Hmmm. Microsoft vs the French. Who to support on this one. Its like choosing between gonorrhea and well... gonorrhea.
I don't feel like digging up the details, but I believe the name "Orange" was used in the discussion where a cell phone maker was persuaded to partner up with Microsoft where Microsoft had some sort of approval or other thing like that delaying the other company's progress. This forced a default by the other company and then Microsoft assumed the technology developed by the other company as a result of the default.
It has been a few years so my memory is a bit hazy, but I'll bet I'm not the only one recalling this...
To answer the phone in French people say "Allo" and it sounds exactly like "Halo".
Imagine the confusion :
dring... dring...
-"Allo?"
-"No, I don't want to play Halo right now."
The second payment was due before any approvals?
Sounds to me like they did a poor job with the contract details.
Not to be too Pro-Microsoft, but I've always found their games division to be really good to work with. At heart they're a bunch of game geeks who are thrilled that they've got the juggernaut to bankroll whatever it is they want to do. And, generally, they seem to want to fund nifty stuff. From a communication standpoint as a platform company they've been every bit as good about communication as Sony and Nintendo, and in certain respects better (in others, worse. Each has their quirks). But, of course, get the toothbrush salesmen involved at a higher level, and who knows what MS will do.
The french company that is licensed to work on this title has a good history of licensed conversions, some with MS IP. But they've never handled anything that would lead one to believe they could do Halo as anything other than a 2D sidescrolling shooter. And they started with wallpapers and ringtones... not exactly a prelude to doing an IP justice. Plus with an IP license cost that alone could develop a mid-level PS2 game, how much could they have left over to actually develop the title?
So I really wouldn't know who to believe without more evidence, but I'd be willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt until other stories like this emerged from developers. In my admittedly limited experience, this doesn't sound like the kind of thing MS's game division usually does. Anyone with more experience working with licensed IP from Redmond willing to share?
The ______ Agenda