Bungie rumored to be breaking away from M$!

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/122799.asp

Interesting development. Sounds like M$ might be losing one of their most profitable development teams...

Seems odd that they would simply allow a studio they own to jump ship with the company name. But.. a company name is not worth much if the team that made it profitable jumps ship...

It's about time...

I hope they bring back marathon and myth.

Jason

Microsoft's only comment has been "There has been no such announcement" so it does look true. Does it make a lot of difference though? Microsoft's gaming division was perfectly capable of losing billions with Bungie, so I'm sure they'll manage to continue losing billions without them.

Maybe bad for Microsoft but personally i don't care as i've never enjoyed a game from them.

Marathon was awesome. I bought a Mac so I could play Marathon and Escape Velocity back in the day.

I seriously doubt that Microsoft are going to let the one studio that consistently delivers games that set new sales records leave.

Let's hope they manage to stay on top of it, after they break with MS..

As I said on other forums, I highly doubt they well - Bungie would have a lot to lose (sales od future XBox games, cost of leaving Microsoft etc), and thats if they are legally allowed to.

However, it would be good if they did - may increase the chance of Halo 2 and 3 coming to the Mac.

And they might even write a game that's marginally more interesting than picking toenail clippings out of a carpet.

*announces latest project*: Toenail Tombola

either way i hope they make another awesome game

I lost it after "and how stingie they are with the profits (comparable to the rest of the industry)", say what? Compared to Valve maybe but they don't do 170m sales in a single day either.

Halo is definitely the lan party game of choice in our household and has been for quite some time. As for the latest edition? Well done Bungie, top dollar product.

I don't really get what all the fuss is about when it comes to Halo. I thought the first one was quite groundbreaking because of the extensive use of shaders, and the interesting NPC AI of the marines. But the later game didn't really add anything and seemed quite dull to me.

Halo itself isn't a particularly interesting setting once you have been through the first game. The bad guys are a bunch of muppets. And duel wield added very little to the experience for me whilst some of the core things that made halo so playable were missing in 2. Controls and camera FOV in particular.

Maybe on the PC you can tweak an .ini of something to get a wider angle of view, I guess that might make the game closer to the original in feel.

Yes thank you someone else agrees that Halo 2's FOV was F#$^%# anyway ... you should check out #3 Ad ... it's quite the treat. It's much better than Halo 2 and includes a neat editor (I wish I had done the AA editor like it) and the movie feature is neat as well as much improved graphics and added gameplay depth reminiscent of the first game but deeper. Also 4-Player online coop :) :) :)

MS will probably buy them out. Its their only decent trump card.

They already own them, D4NM4N.

I dont see how they can just leave then.
We dont know what the contract is between them. Was it a total or partial buyout? Was it just an exclusive contract? Mabe they forced MS to keep some kind of break-away clause in there (just in case) when microsoft game studios 'aquired' them in 2000. with an "either you do it or we go to sony" type argument.

Because you can buy a company but you cannot buy people. At some point the contracts of the employees to continue working there are going to run out, and they are then free to leave, leaving Microsoft with a company called Bungie which has none of the Bungie employees. What is being rumoured is that they are being allowed to keep their name because it's not much use to Microsoft if they no longer have any of the developers. In return for which, I guess Bungie are giving up what few ( if any ) rights they had left to the Halo IP.

yeah lol, i see your point, it would be pointless to hang on to the name :/ I strongly doubt they would be able to leave with the Halo rights though (including all the design docs & media with it)
For any other industry the name would sell on its own, but gamers would be instantly clued in, eg, what would intrest you as a avid gamer more, the name "ID Software" or "John Carmack Of doom & quake fame"? The clueless would soon be clued-in by the games mags.

Looks like this is true. A management buy-out. MS get their next two games.

Well, Rare tried to pull out, since the Stamper brothers decided to find other venues, but never thought that Bungie would follow suit with that.

I doubt if very many people in the gaming public have a clue who works for rare and bungie. Probably wouldn't make any difference if the original Halo team left. The Original game dictated the two later titles. Both games that anyone with a half decent budget could have developed without a great deal of creativity in the design department.

Rare was a bad move from MS from the beginning. Why they bought a developer who's best days were long gone, and old trophies had ages pretty badly anyway. Swearing stuffed animals, er squirrelys were a novelty on earlier consoles. but far superceded in the shock stakes in recent years.

Rare did well with nintendo because they both had the same kiddie fun mentality in their games, but completely fell flat with MS with titles that may still have done well on a NGC. The games just didn't suit the target platforms audience well.

Right, and if it weren't for Microsoft buying out Rare, it's for sure that the DS and Wii would have been far better in the long haul, because they'd still have all the relations in the world with Ninty.

However, as far as a lot of the Bungie team pulling out, I doubt we're gonna see a Halo 4 or later out of them. With that in mind, do you think that we're gonna start seeing a new company form from these developers that left the building?

Really? I'm pretty sure that one of the two games that Bungie now owe Microsoft will be Halo 4, and that the other a new IP.

Do you even know what games Rare and Nintendo make? Just because it's not banned in Australia, doesn't make it a kids game.

I can confirm this, Tridinaut.com a privatly owned company is in nagotiation with Microsoft to buy Bungie. Soon to be announced. You can sure expect better games from TridiBungie soon!

"Bungienaut" sounds better.. :p

And that's their new logo...

Yeah mostly simple crappy games with really nice polish, Been making games since the 80's. Most well known for stuff like diddy kong, donkey kong games, Golden Eye (which was good in its day I suppose). Butmost of their games since they teamed up with nintendo have been kiddie type games.

I'm sorry if that offends, but I'm not into their stuff. Nice polish and presentation, not bad toony art style crappy over simple controls, lacklustre gameplay.

Just depends on what it if you look for in a game I suppose.

New games, like Grabbed by the ghoulies, viva pinta, perfect dark zero, conker and Kameo. All disappoint because they don't really cater for the Xbox's audience and would have done much better on nintendo's systems.

I think that Rare's games are too polished for their own good - case in point: Kameo. Graphically at least, the game was extremely over-polished to the point where it felt heavy and cluttered. Personally speaking, I find Rare's cartoon style (coupled with their typical cartoon voice work) utterly charmless.

Rare are like the punchy boxer who keeps on slugging well past his prime. Oh, Ultimate Play the Game, where did you go wrong?

So I'm curious. To you what is a kiddie type game? To me, a kiddie type game is something like say "Project Gotham Racing". You know the kind of driving game that appeals to people not old enough to drive yet. Personally I wouldn't classify Killer Instinct, Blast Corps, Golden Eye, Perfect Dark and Conkers Bad Fur Day as "kiddie" games. By a long shot.

What? Like Aerial Antics?

Well you're half right. Unfortunately EA Sports owns the endorsed sports franchise, putting the XBox audience well out of reach for anyone else - I don't see how one can realistically blame Rare for being bought by a company who tried (and failed) to expand their market beyond dorms, farms and frat houses.

I agree in the Aerial Antics front entirely, allthough the controls arent so simple, the gameplay certainly is too simple.

In my opinion Xbox has many of the best games developed for it. Most of them make it to the PC eventually. I allready know that you (Flameduck) and I will never agree on anything on any significant level. When it comes to gaming, I dislike just about every aspect of modern Japanese popular art and video gaming culture. So were not likely to agree on what makes good games either.

For the record I like Rare and Nintendo and Aerial Antics ( and ... well just about everything ;) It's not Ad's falt that AA is what it is. He made it look infinitely better whilst sticking to the original idea ... which was supposed to complement Marble Blast in the Garage Games' lineup.

I don't believe that the Project Gotham racing games were even intended for Hardcore racing sim fanatics. It was never intended to be realistic which is probably why the main gameplay of the first two games revolved around stacking up tricks in multipliers to get higher credit pointed (Kudos). With these points you could buy new cars.

In many ways it has more in common with Tony Hawks skateboard games, I much prefer cars to skateboarding so it's obvious which I prefer.

I never played PGR 3 because it didn't seem like fun starting with a supercar. I liked working up from nothing, and driving cars like the rotary engine Cosmo. As far as sims go, I can have more fun driving my own car around town that I'm likely to get in most racing games.

With Aerial Antics, I really like the idea behind the game, and with some time and effort I still think it has a lot of potential. It must be about 4 years old, and compares very favourably with other budget shareware games from that time.