Bungie Close to a Deal for Hush-Hush New Project

[Andy Chalk]

Bungie Close to a Deal for Hush-Hush New Project

Halo [http://www.bungie.net/] game but while it's not revealing any names at this point, Bethesda's Ashley Cheng says there are very few publishers who will be able to afford it.

Lars Bakken, the multiplayer designer on Eurogamer [http://halo.xbox.com/halo3/] that the company should know "sometime soon" who is going to handle its new project, which remains under closely-guarded wraps. "I don't handle these things, but I'd imagine we're going to know way before we make the public announcement of who's handling that!" he said. "But sure, I think those talks are, I guess, close."

Bungie Microsoft [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/77638-Its-Official-Bungie-Goes-Solo]. Even so, he added, only a small handful of existing publishers will have the resources to take on the studio's next project.

"I suspect Bungie only owes Microsoft two more games and they're done. Halo ODST and Reach and that's that. No more Halo for Bungie," he wrote on his blog. "You can count on one hand the number of publishers around who can afford to publish Bungie's next game: Ubisoft [http://www.ea.com], Microsoft, and of course, Bethesda. I can only imagine how much it will cost to snag their next title."

He mentioned one other interesting, albeit extremely unlikely, possibility as well. "There is one more publisher who could get into the game: Sony [http://www.sony.com]. That would be interesting," he added.

Halo 3: ODST is scheduled for release on September 22 while Halo: Reach is expected to land sometime in late 2010.


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[HardRockSamurai]

After hearing this news, I can't help but give Bungie some props. Good for them, getting out of Microsoft's greedy hands so that they can try something new. That's what all developers SHOULD be doing.

 

[scotth266]

Bungie makes good games, so I'm curious to see what this big-budget title is. My personal bet is that EA or Microsoft will pick it up. Sony is a potential candidate: they might be inspired to grab it after seeing the success Microsoft had with partnering with them. Then you have Ubisoft/Activision, and Bethseda (I doubt Bethseda will pick it up, but hey, I could be wrong.)

 

[HardRockSamurai]

After hearing this news, I can't help but give Bungie some props. Good for them, getting out of Microsoft's greedy hands so that they can try something new. That's what all developers SHOULD be doing.

They left Microsoft MONTHS ago. You're VERY late to the party, and all of the above are just as "greedy".

As long as it's on Xbox 360, I don't care.

Actually, I was referring to the TWO GAMES Bungie still owes Microsoft; I knew that they split up ages ago.

Also, did you consider that their "new game" MIGHT NOT BE on the 360?

 

[quack35]

I'm really looking forward to this. Bungie is a great developer, I can't wait to see what new ideas they can come up with.

 

[GamerLuck]

Also, did you consider that their "new game" MIGHT NOT BE on the 360?

well i think it might be a bit of a bad move for bungie to completely abandon the 360... i mean, most of bungies fans are 360 owners, and while that may just pretain to the Halo franchis, i think alot of halo fans would get bungies new game just because it has bungie's name on it. and as for going exclusively sony... something tells me that wont happen. Bungie may not have forgotten how sony showed them the door the first time around (though at the same time it might just stand to use the same reasoning for them going exclusively sony...)

I just hope they dont abandon us 360 owners.... that would suck.

 

[Credge]

Bungie makes good games...

They haven't made a good game since Oni =\.

 

[daviejjd]

I know it's a figure for public hate round here, but i would be upset of they stopped making halo games, it's just a staple now, and i find it hard to believe anyone would stop making something sooooo successful

 

[Therumancer]

*Yawns*

Let me be honest, to begin with it was kind of interesting when companies started dancing around with "do nothing" press annoucements to generate hype and get more eyes focused on them. However I'm jaded to the whole thing and it actually hits my gag reflex nowadays more than anything. If information isn't substantial it's not even worth reporting, and I think the gaming industry press should start filtering crud like this.

Oh yeah "Well we have a project we're working on, but we can't tell you what it is, we have absolutly no publisher but we are probably going to get one soon, but we're being picky in pimping outselves out since we want gazillions of dollars for whatever we decide to do because well... we're famous for Halo". Of course given that while they broke from Microsoft they are still obligated to produce 2 games for them going into next year, and I'd imagine anyone would be stupid to pay them premium bucks when they still have their interest divided by previous contract if nothing else.

At any rate, we've all been burned by this "big but secret releases" which turn out to be either derivitive drek or "OMG, what were they thinking" messes. Truthfully I tend to notice that *most* of the games worth getting excited over are announced years ahead of time. Oh sure, even then there are failures, but consider how long games like Oblivion, or Fallout 3 were in the pipe, along with others like Final Fantasy. Of course the big industry joke of this kind of thing is "Duke Nukem Forever".

At any rate, for all we know Bungee's big plan is to bank all their Halo swag, get someone to pay them a fortune to make another shooter which will "pwn Halo", and then release a game which is little more than a webcam porn movie with the Bungee design team lining up, spanking their monkeys, and blowing their loads on the screen (so it seemingly spreads accross the other side of the monitor) screaming "for the fans". Then they can fly off to their mansions in private jets claiming that it was final artistic liscence since it was a "Shooter" of a sort and "the best virtual Bukkake program ever invented".

The messed up thing is that if they were to do that right now, and put the "Halo" name on it, it would be guaranteed to sell like 10 million copies and have people defending it rabidly even with that content.

Jokes aside, the point is that this could be utter trash, why do we care if they have a secret project? Either tell us something substantial, or don't waste our bloody time. Until then I shall assume they purchused the rights to "Alien Disco Safari" (Budget Title) and are planning to make a 200 million dollar sequel with someone else's money and react appropriatly.

 

[scnj]

Would be cool if they struck a joint deal with Microsoft and Sony for equal shares.

 

[MasterSqueak]

After hearing this news, I can't help but give Bungie some props. Good for them, getting out of Microsoft's greedy hands so that they can try something new. That's what all developers SHOULD be doing.

They left Microsoft MONTHS ago. You're VERY late to the party, and all of the above are just as "greedy".

As long as it's on Xbox 360, I don't care.

Actually, I was referring to the TWO GAMES Bungie still owes Microsoft; I knew that they split up ages ago.

Also, did you consider that their "new game" MIGHT NOT BE on the 360?

It better be PC at least.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Jokes aside, the point is that this could be utter trash, why do we care if they have a secret project?

Because of all the yammering from the yammering classes about how Bungie hasn't done anything but Halo. (Which is false, I might add. They have a long track record going back to their days as a Mac developer house. Heck, one of the first editions of this here Escapist had a piece by John Tynes [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_9/56-The-Contrarian-Roll-the-Dice], who worked on their unannounced and alas unfinished Phoenix project from the pre-Halo days.)

Bungie has said several times that they have a new IP on the way, but this is the first concrete evidence that there really is one out there. That's why this is news. (Well, that and that the deal is expected to be big.)

-- Steve

 

[TxMxRonin]

How about this, if you can't tell us about something then don't fucking tell us about it.

 

[Pendragon9]

Finally, something else in the news besides a new Halo.

Pull this off, and I might have some respect for you yet, Bungie.

 

[Amnestic]

At any rate, for all we know Bungee's big plan is to bank all their Halo swag, get someone to pay them a fortune to make another shooter which will "pwn Halo", and then release a game which is little more than a webcam porn movie with the Bungee design team lining up, spanking their monkeys, and blowing their loads on the screen (so it seemingly spreads accross the other side of the monitor) screaming "for the fans". Then they can fly off to their mansions in private jets claiming that it was final artistic liscence since it was a "Shooter" of a sort and "the best virtual Bukkake program ever invented".

Sounds hot.

 

[Utarefson]

He mentioned one other interesting, albeit extremely unlikely, possibility as well. "There is one more publisher who could get into the game: Sony [http://www.sony.com]. That would be interesting," he added.

[...]

...from Mac to PC to Xbox to Xbox 360 to Playstation 3?

 

[TheFacelessOne]

Well...sad to see Halo go away. I just love the universe.

I hope whatever they're keeping hush-hush is good. And that Sony doesn't publish this game.

Good enough to be the Supreme Almighty General Emperor King Ruler of the Gaming Market.

 

[Bigeyez]

Well...sad to see Halo go away. I just love the universe.

I hope whatever their keeping hush-hush is good.

Good enough to be the Supreme Almighty General Emperor King Ruler of the Gaming Market.

Halo definitely ain't going away. Microsoft owns the IP and it's basically their Mario so even without Bungie we're going to see Halo games, for better or worse.

I can't wait to see what Bungie does though. I'm just hoping they cover another genre and do something completely different from Halo, Oni, or Marathon.