Bungie Splitting for M$

[predatorprime]

Its official now after a few weeks of rumors.
Personally since the only good games Bungie made were the Halo series I could care less.
I think its a good business decision on M$ part since they more than likely got a good deal of money out of it, given that they were "soul" owners of Bungie prior to this.
Now if only they could unload Rare again...

[Variation-XBA]

MS owns the Halo name and they've said they'll still be primarily be focusing on Xbox360 as the platform as choice anyways, so I wouldn't be all that worried.

[Kraft]

Kinda grabs my interest. Maybe this will give Bungie leeway to go back and expand on the Marathon series. Chances are conversations with Microsoft went something like this:

Bungie: We were wanting to start developement on the new Marathon saga.
Microsoft: I'm sorry, but the word 'marathon' doesn't include the word 'halo'. We're gonna have to nix you on that one.

Sidenote, aren't we past the age that using a $ instead of an s was cool?

[predatorprime]

Sidenote, aren't we past the age that using a $ instead of an s was cool?

I'm sorry... I didn't know it was cool in the first place :eek:

On a side note to this, bungie must have done this for a reason. MS was 100 owner of Bungie so it would have cost bungie a fair bit of coin to buy their company back. It would be a shame it MS started to get the same rep with developers that Nintendo used to and what sony has now, which is basically "do it our way or f*** off"

[Kraft]

Information on what the parting terms and conditions were is still sketchy at best. The only thing for sure is this is a great deal for Bungie. Console exclusivity is awesome for the console makers, not so good for the dev companies. Sure Halo 3 is setting some amazing records, but imagine how much bigger the launch would have been if Halo 3 was cross-platform.

I really don't see Microsoft showing the 'do it our way' mentality like Nintendo did. Nintendo was stingy with their Seal of Approval on issues like family-orientation harking back to the days of such incidents as the blood removal in mortal kombat. The only thing even remotely similar I've seen out of Microsoft is 'give us better Xbox Live support' which I hate to say, but I fully endorse. Perhaps this is the reason that bungie actually had seperate dev teams working on the single player and multi-player versions of the game.

It's no secret that MS picked up Bungie to secure exclusivity rights to their upcoming Halo series. MS saw and hoped the game would be a winner and they obviously bet on the right horse. Now that the series has concluded MS has gotten all they hoped for and wanted out of Bungie so splitting ways seems an obvious course of action. It's kinda the natural progression of things. Rare did it, Rockstar did it, countless others before them have done it. Get serious funding for exclusive projects, make yourself famous and then go out and make some big bucks for yourself.

[l Maximus l]

I read on Bungie's website that nothing really is going to change regarding XBox 360, but, Bungie is really excited about the change. Maybe it's because they get to party more than they did before while at work? Who knows - either way, I don't think a single thing is going to change from a gamer standpoint. They may make more PC games on top of 360 games, so, I guess nothing much is going to change other than that. They are likely going to branch off of Halo-related projects, too.

While I think Bungie has an incredible history, they aren't exactly cranking out titles like the competition. I mean, who knows? If they make a new Marathon, it could easily flop...I guess we'll see. I never played the first Marathon, so, I have no idea. I didn't even know about how significant the acquisition of Bungie was until well after Halo 1 was released...

[predatorprime]

While I think Bungie has an incredible history.

I would like to say that I have had the misfortune of play Bungie's Halo games on PC, and they were pretty much a pile of ass. Myth and Oni were the 2 main ones, and I've played the open source version of Marathon as well, and it was pretty much forgettable.

One can only hope that they will maintain the quality they've established with Halo.

[BROOKLYNSBATMAN]

"They are likely going to branch off of Halo-related projects"

I sure hope not maximus,i think they should branch out to a story which is completly diffrent from halo... if they wanna do 1st person shooters keep there but give a completly diffrent story... otherwise theyll end up burning out games like halo... no alien vent on a world destruction, no robotic armor marine.... something diffrent..

[predatorprime]

Bungie has now said 2 things since the split -

1) The intend to stay MS only, atleast for the foreseeable future

2) The only title they have confirmed that they are working on is the Halo game with Peter Jackson

[Kraft]

While I think Bungie has an incredible history, they aren't exactly cranking out titles like the competition.

I'm not sure I can agree with you on this point. Bungie has put out 3 quality installments of halo in 5 years. I really can't think of any development company that is topping this. The only ones that are coming to mind are Rockstar and Ubisoft, but you have to remember that each company actually has multiple branches working on different games. Bungie has one branch working on one game.

[predatorprime]

The biggest test for Bungie is to follow up Halo 3 with a non-Halo related project. If they can follow it up with something good, then you can consider them a premier developer. Until then they just filled a hole in the market that wasn't taken (Multiplayer FPS Unreal style).
Look at a company like Clover Studios that made 3 great games atleast in the time that Bungie made the Halo series... they're closed now.
That may have been a stupid point to bring up but if you think about it 3 games in 5 years isn't very much... even as a single developer...especially when all 3 games were based off of each other...

[l Maximus l]

I'm not sure I can agree with you on this point. Bungie has put out 3 quality installments of halo in 5 years. I really can't think of any development company that is topping this. The only ones that are coming to mind are Rockstar and Ubisoft, but you have to remember that each company actually has multiple branches working on different games. Bungie has one branch working on one game.

I completely agree...I'm just referring to the sales that Bungie has been successfully able to produce with their Halo series. Honestly, I had no idea who Bungie was until months after playing Halo 1. I actually know nothing about Marathon or any of their previous creations.

By the way, it's really great to see you hanging around, Kraft!

[Ainokeatoo]

2) The only title they have confirmed that they are working on is the Halo game with Peter Jackson

Halo wars? Oh god I hope not, peter jackson had a nice movie, his game BLOWED ****ING BALLS >.> i mean **** bro. That game was only there for GS

[predatorprime]

Halo wars? Oh god I hope not, peter jackson had a nice movie, his game BLOWED ****ING BALLS >.> i mean **** bro. That game was only there for GS

No man... Halo Wars is being done by Ensemble Studios...the did Age of Empires. I've seen some screens and it reminds me a lot of Starcraft to be honest. Also Peter Jackson really had no say in the steaming pile of ass that was King Kong. His name just got attached to try and promote the movie and the game.
Any info that I've read seems to sound like the Peter Jackson Halo game is more of an Adventure style than the traditional FPS of Halos past, I guess we'll all have to wait and see though.