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Official - Bungie Departing Microsoft
jasoncart writes "Microsoft today confirmed the news that has been speculated for some days, that Halo developer Bungie is 'on the path' to becoming an independent company. Microsoft describes this as an 'evolution' of their relationship, but no concrete reason is given for this move. 'Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, said the company was "supporting Bungie's desire to return to its independent roots". However, he added, Microsoft "will continue to invest in our Halo entertainment property with Bungie and other partners, such as Peter Jackson, on a new interactive series set in the Halo universe". "We look forward to great success with Bungie as our long-term relationship continues to evolve through Halo-related titles and new IP created by Bungie," he added.'" MTV wonders out loud ... if Bungie doesn't make Halo 4 who will? The official press release from Bungie gives you the same information from the other side, as does an interview with Frankie at GameDailyBiz. Update: 10/05 21:25 GMT by Z : In the wake of the announcement Kotaku has a quickie email interview discussing the future of the company.
...that I'm not on the inside so I don't know all the little happenings that occur behind closed doors, but it's quite obvious that the Halo franchise is a boon to both Bungie and to Microsoft...I wouldn't be suprised if Halo remained a Bungie and Microsoft exclusive venture....Bungie getting more freedom to do what they wish with the franchise, and getting a healthy sum of money from Microsoft in the process.
In all honesty, both sides would be foolish to give up the current relationship they have with that franchise, even if Bungie becomes 100% independent.
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Personally, I would love to see Bungie (finally) create a non-Halo title. They make good games, it'd be nice to see a good game that isn't a moderate evolution of a previous one. Enough with the sequels.
And If I was a game developer working on the same title for years on end - I'd probably want a change too.
Just because they own the IP and made the first few games, does not mean that they have to make all the games in perpituity.
For example, Id Software, despite providing the engine and making Quake 1-3, did not develop Quake 4 -- it developed by Raven Software.
Personally I'd love to see them develop a non-Halo title. Bungee makes great games, it'd be nice to see their creative talents leaned in a different direction. Enough with the sequels. And I can imagine if I was a game developer working with the same series for years on end (since 1999?), I'd probably want a change too. If they develop a non-Halo title, for PC, I'd be one of the first to try it.
Ever since Bungie was purchased by Microsoft, they've done nothing but produce Halo for the XBox. No PC ports, no different games, they're barely even allowed to produce story-driven single player content. Go back and look at Bungie's pre-Xbox games: the Marathon series (which was intended to tie in to Halo), the Myth series, even Pathways into Darkness was more original than Halo 3.
I was angry with Bungie when, just a few months before Halo was to be released as a Mac exclusive, Microsoft bought them out and put them to work. But eventually I began to feel sorry for them. Bungie has had its creativity stifled for quite some time now and they've finally realized it.
Perhaps Bugnie wants to get back to developing for other non-windows platforms as well?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Trilogy
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Bungie is jumping...
All they do is make Halo and even then we wait a YEAR for the PC release.
There is no excuse for that other than to squeaze as much as they can in the 360 market. I just wonder if they will be given the same freedom as an "independent"
I take it you really want Spaceballs: The search for more money to finally be released.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Bungie is as tired of hearing about Halo as I am!
Bungle is leaving Microsoft? I guess that only leaves Zippy....
I don't mean another game that's called Halo, and is set in exactly the same storyline.
More like one set in the same universe. It's my understanding that basically every shooter they've ever put out, including the Marathon games, is set in the same universe. Maybe even the shooter/rpg before that... what was it called?
But imagine being a Marathon fan leading up to the launch of the original Halo. Cortana actually sent out emails to various fan sites ahead of time, so people were analyzing all the ways in which her emails could be related to a sequel to Marathon... and then they got Halo, which was so completely different, yet in the same universe, with kind of the same theme.
I would love to see them do something like that again. Imagine something as much better than Halo as Halo was better than Marathon.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No Halo 4? You mean, $170 Million in the FIRST day of sales isn't enough incentive to make Halo 4? I'm sorry, but there's way too much money wrapped up in that franchise. It's not going anywhere soon.
Quake 4 was worth the cash for the single player alone. That's just my lousy opinion though.
I have nothing to say.
Does this mean that they are goign to release Halo DS?
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Is that Bungie get as far away as Microsoft as they can without crashing the company, hold their own for a bit, but then come run rushing back towards Microsoft though never as close, and then they will distance themselves again but less severe, and so on and so forth.
"I only speak the truth"
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The article also says Microsoft will "will retain an equity interest" in Bungie.
This tells me that Bungie simply goes from Microsoft 1st party to Microsoft 2nd party, like Sony's relationship with Polyphony (makers of GT).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Actually, Microsoft is keeping the IP, not Bungie:
"Microsoft will retain an equity interest in Bungie, at the same time continuing its long-standing publishing agreement between Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie for the Microsoft-owned "Halo" intellectual property as well as other future properties developed by Bungie."
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-05BungieEvolvesPR.mspx
Microsoft doesn't know how to milk people for money, you say? Let's look at two of Microsoft's base products, XP and Vista. Now they could just release two full-featured packages, one of XP and one of Vista, but that's not how you profit.
This is how you profit: Making ten versions of two products, with minor differences in between versions, but charging $100 more to advance to the next level.
XP Home Edition
XP Professional
XP Tablet PC Edition
XP Media Center Edition
XP Professional x64 Edition
Vista Home Basic
Vista Home Premium
Vista Business
Vista Enterprise
Vista Ultimate
While it's not exactly merchandising, it's pretty damn close.
Maybe they'll go back to making Mac games again. Won't hold my breath though.
Halo 3 was huge because it is at the climax of the story. It can't help but sell. Why do many sequels fail? They are the same character in the same world but with a new story. The old story is done and gone. Halo 2 is a different kind of sequel because it continued the story of Halo: CE and Halo 3 finishes the story. Just by playing Halo: CE and Halo 2 one can figure out the basic premise of Halo 3. The tag line says it all. What would Halo 4 even be about? It would just be a standard sequel.
Most games are a single story. The enemy is introduced, you battle the enemy, you beat the game by finally destroying the enemy. In Halo: CE, the enemy is the Covenant. You battle the Covenant and get introduced to the Flood, which you battle as well. The game ends with the destruction of Halo and the Flood but the Covenant remain, thus Halo 2. In Halo 2, you fight the Covenant and more of the Flood. The game ends with neither the destruction of the Covenant nor the Flood, thus Halo 3. Halo 3 finishes the fight. Then what? Why even go on? The story is over.
If you want to make games without a manager constantly looking over your shoulder telling you what your game should be like, then it makes a lot of sense.
Bungie relinquished control of Halo years ago when Microsoft bought them. While at MGS, they had to fight constantly for whatever control of Halo they could get. Keep in mind, Halo is a good series, but having Halos and Master Chiefs in your game isn't what makes it great. Just look at single-player Halo 2. Freedom to be creative -- to break all the rules and make something new, unexpected, and fun -- is where great games come from. You have to create the right conditions for that to happen, and that's what Bungie is doing by increasing their independence.
I'm not into FPS but I hear halo is pretty good. Marathon was good back in it's day. Another title you may not have known about was the Myth series. Hot damn I loved that series. It's classified under strategy games but it's really an early foray into tactical unit management and it was brilliant. I miss it so. It was one game that I wasn't good at, never once won an online game I played. And yet I couldn't get enough multiplayer. All that 3D work and physics modelling you see in WC3 and SC2... Myth pioneered that in "strategy" games ten years ago.
I want to see new Mac games from Bungie again. I liked playing all their games, even FPS. Doom and quake never interested me. Marathon... there was just something about Marathon. The best companies invest in the mythos and storyline of their game. Bungie does that so well. When Bungie was purchased by Microsoft and halo taken to xbox, I lost all interest.
And hell, it's about time they just came up with something completely new.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I wouldn't mind seeing them make Halo into what they wanted it to be before Microsoft picked them up and it got retooled into a console shooter. I was hoping for more Marathon mythos... and I got "just shoot everything to get to the next level".
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Cool, thanks for the link! I might have to dust it off and play it again. Myth 1/2 had to be one of my favorite online games ever.
God, I remember running my ghols around harassing the crap out of people. Grabbing heads from fallen bad guys and chucking it at their soldiers and taunting them, then taking off as their whole line followed me across the map before they noticed, while my buddy came round with the main troops from the front.
Or desert between your ears. Great map! Two wights on either side of the bridge, check! 8 Dwarfies waiting behind the archers, CHECK. Taking out their archers with ghols! WIN! When they finally said f it and sent the hoards across the bridge, BIG BADA BOOM!!
Hell, even the FFA's were great, giant cluster fucks in the middle trying to win the king of the hill. Sometimes it would be fun to not even try for the game and just go kill off your buddy, or throw max thrall into the mix just to watch the carnage.
Oh man or the pounding as the trow came thumpping round the corner to start kicking the heads off your berserker's.
Wow, get off my lawn kids. Sorry for the trip down memory lane there. So uh, Bungie, get off halo, and make something new for us to roll around in, pllllleaaaaaaaseeeeeeee.
Recycling content. Somebody asks this exact same question every time there's a Halo or Bungie article.
Actually, quite the opposite, Microsoft has been very careful about image with respect to Halo. They have had ideas from all over to tie into the game, from toy guns to lingerie link. But with such a huge player base it is better to be careful and conservative about image and keep the merchandising limited. Profit off of a few key items instead of being a merchandising whore.
"But sure, now that we're branching of and controlling our destiny, that puts us in a position where we could put ourselves back on the [Mac] platform definitively again," said Jarrard." From this MacWorld article.
I'd love to see them do another Marathon sequel with the Halo engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Trilogy
What? Halo Wars will be a straight-up RTS, like Age of Empires (hey, it is Ensemble making it). It's not "Halo 4", because it's not following the Chief/Cortana/Arbiter/Flood storyline that was finished in Halo 4. Also, as I understand it, Halo Wars is supposed to be a prequel of sorts to Halo 1, being set earlier in the Human/Covenant war than Halo 1 itself. If there is a "Halo 4", it would have to be a new Chief/Cortana/Arbiter storyline, since Halo 3 closed up all of the hanging threads from the first trilogy.
I'd rather see Bungie make some new properties. Marathon still holds up decently well using Aleph One, and Marathon 2: Durandal has made it to XBLA. I'd love to see Marathon 1 and 3 on XBLA as well, but I don't really care for a remake of the original Marathon games in the Halo engine. It would be nice to see another trilogy set in the Marathon universe, but it would also be nice to see a second Chief/Cortana trilogy (not necessarily called Halo, as it wouldn't have to revolve around the Halo installations).
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Marathon infinity shipped with Forge (level editor) and Anvil (physics editor).
My understanding is that Microsoft has "first refusal" on the publishing rights for anything Bungie makes in the future. But Bungie will be able to work on whatever they want. Which means they could decide to make their next game for the Wii, and Microsoft would have the option to publish it. A Nintendo game with "Microsoft" in big letters on the box. How weird would that be?!?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
How would they be able to make an Oni 2? IIRC, at the end of the game everyone on Earth is dead except for Konoko, because the chrysalis protects her from the now-poisonous atmosphere. That'd be one lonely world in a sequel.
You mean Star Wars : The Phantom Menace wasn't directed by Mel Brooks?
You shut your filthy mouth! Clamp that pie hole shut! Don't you know even breathing an idea that foul can make it come true?! Say things like that and tomorrow we could all wake up to find Stan Lee has signed over licenses to all the Marvel properties to Uwe ... Oh God ...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Thanks Osty. I was not recycling, I just hadn't seen or posted on the topic, so thought to ask.
Other than the well implemented vehicles point(Tribes 2? not sure if it came out before or after Halo), many of the other ones seem to be minor points of game mechanics. Many of the points listed were implemented in other (very popular) games.
Take counterstrike for example. There were simple throw grenade button mods which I'm sure most people used. It was a game that delivered a wonderful online experience. Unreal tournament was not the same type of game but also had many different game types and was one of the most fun online games out there.. Tribes had many of the boons you say long before halo.
The story was ok, but a masterful story, I guess I just didn't see it. Perhaps try half life or, newer, bioshock. Or even the theif games or system shock.
I also agree on the couch point, but I've been playing in 5.1 surround for years on the computer. And any gain added from the couch seems to be taken away by the fact that you're playing with a joystick rather than a single derivative device like a mouse.
Even with all this, it still seems halo is a mediocre game in comparison with other offerings, but since it was the best thing going on the console, it has a lot of hype behind it.
I hear what you're saying, different strokes for different folks, but even compared to other current console games, halo 3 seems dated and mid-level. (gears of war, et al)
I kind of got more into this than I wanted to I think. Basically it comes down to, I played halo on the computer, and it did not seem to stack up to other games on the computer in any meaningful way. Is it different in the console arena? That is basically what I'm asking.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I'm still waiting for Call of Duty, book-on-tape. Cheers to cross-format publication.
Linky: http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/05/174217
For those who don't want to read AFA here is the short version: More copies of Halo for Mac have been pirated than sold. Mostly out of spite from mac fan boys for the fact that originally Halo was to be a Mac first title (some say Mac-only, but...) before Microsoft bought Bungie and had it developed as the "killer app". I generally assumed that enough of geekdom around here knew the story...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
You think you're being funny. But you're not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceballs:_The_TV_Series
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The problem is that selling crappy merchandise is so much more lucrative than the billion dollar expanding software market.
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