Bungie Leaves Microsoft

[Parnell]

Well sort of
Bungie Branches off from Microsoft (http://kotaku.com/gaming/breaking/bungie-split-confirmed-307565.php)
I wonder if this means Halo DS really will happen??
It's Official!!
B

[Sectaurs]

Damnit! You're good.

[Parnell]

Just covering my bases.
:)
B

[cookepuss]

Well sort of
Bungie Branches off from Microsoft (http://kotaku.com/gaming/breaking/bungie-split-confirmed-307565.php)
I wonder if this means Halo DS really will happen??
It's Official!!
B

I was thinking the same thing. I'm actually not surprised. Bungie never unleashed their lawyers on IGN, despite previewing real Halo DS footage. I suspect that the game isn't as dead as we think. I'm guessing that it WILL pop up and it'll be kind of like a "best of" version - taking bits & pieces from all 3 console games.

Either way, this is big news. That's like Nintendo losing one of their key 2nd parties. Even more, even the though of losing Halo as an exclusive is like Mario making his home on the PS3.

Practically speaking, nothing has changed and you guys won't see much, if any difference
Not sure how much I believe that, especially in the long term. Independence means a whole lot of things. I'm sure that they have every intention of upholding their MS contracts. I think that this unties their hands in other regards though.

[Antimagic]

like cooke said, this is like mario leaving nintendo. I never thought I would see the day...

[Eclipse]

Except that Halo is still owned by Microsoft (I'm 95% sure), sooo that means that it's still up to them, not Bungie. Also that means the only thing they lost was the authority to tell Bungie to make Halo 4 :P. Now Bungie can work on what they want. From the sound of it tho they still seem really 360 focused with their work.

[cookepuss]

Except that Halo is still owned by Microsoft (I'm 95% sure), sooo that means that it's still up to them, not Bungie.
Just looked over some articles on this. I think that the copyright is actually retained by the original IP owner, Bungie. MS only acts as publisher.

Remember, Bungie was originally a company unto themselves. They're only reverting back to an independent state. Bungie was already nearly a decade old when MS acquired them in 2000. However, Bungie themselves had unveiled Halo in 1999 at the Macworld Expo, meaning that it had probably been in development since at least a year prior. That also means that the original copyright holder is still Bungie. MS bought them out after the origination of the property.

Beyond that, it might get a little muddy.

On the one hand, it could be argued that Bungie was a 2nd party not 1st. Halo originated as their own in-house product, prior to the MS acquisition. Anything to come later on would be a derivative work based on the original Bungie owned property. It could be argued that Bungie owns those derivative works too. (In this case, derivative works would mean post-Halo1 characters & locales.)

It's not that simple though.

On the other hand, those derivative works might also be considered MS owned since (after June 2000) Bungie was a MS owned company. Any derivative material could be considered "work product" and, as such, would not be usable by Bungie later on down the road.

An indirect example of this might be the old ROM comic book from Marvel. ROM was actually a licensed property. Marvel crafted a whole universe and supporting cast for ROM.

When the licensing deal had expired, Marvel lost legal rights to use ROM in future products. However, Marvel retains all rights to the characters and settings created during the licensed run. That means that Marvel could utilize the Spaceknights or Dire Wraiths characters whenever they wanted. Hasbro, the actual owner of the ROM property, would have to license those characters, even though they were a product of the licensing deal.

Personally, I think that any post-Halo1 material (characters/settings) might be off limits should Bungie take Halo to a non-MS platform. Bungie might actually have to license (imho) those post-Halo1 characters.

Also that means the only thing they lost was the authority to tell Bungie to make Halo 4 :P.
Which lends credence to the notion that it is Bungie who owns the core copyrihgt, not MS. If it were the other way around, MS could just switch developers like Nintendo did for the DS version of Metroid Prime.

From the sound of it tho they still seem really 360 focused with their work.
Well, they're probably still under contracts for certain things. I'd sound enthusiastic too if I was looking to NOT burn my bridges. :) Keep in mind that Bungie will be expanding their staff. With independence, that could mean a lot of things, beyond just new franchises.

[Eclipse]

Cooke I got most my information from this Kotaku interview.

Bungie Owns Bungie (http://kotaku.com/gaming/feature/bungie-owns-bungie-the-qa-307656.php)

In which there are quite a few references to the fact that Microsoft owns Halo rights. After all if you think about it there is Halo Wars being worked on my Ensamble and there was the whole Halo DS debacle that everyone is just finding out about :P. Again, not 100% postive yet, just what the interview made it sound like :P.

I agree about Bungie expanding. Obviously they have had a great relationship with a very powerful publisher in the west and they have very strong ties. It would be silly to damage that :P.

[cookepuss]

In which there are quite a few references to the fact that Microsoft owns Halo rights.
That does seem to be what it sounds like, although I still question the existence of the copyright notices on various images, promos, & so forth that denote Bungie as the property holder. Weird. (I'm noticing various "legitimate news" sites crediting Bungie as the copyright holder, not MS. For example, MSNBC articles attribute rights to Bungie in all of their Halo related images.)

Assuming that what you say is true, that'd be a pretty boneheaded maneuver on Bungie's part. Considering Halo's more than warm reception back in the 1999 preview, at which point they DID still own the copyright, you'd think that it would have been "grandfathered" in as a creator owned work - only published by MS. Talk about selling a piece of your soul for the big time. I can understand any future, post-2K releases, but the MS deal was ex post facto. Really, REALLY dumb. They should kick their lawyer's butt. :)

Assuming that "lock, stock, & barrel" means 100% MS retention of former Bungie assets, that means that this reacquired independence only means that they're almost back to square one. The difference between Bungie 2k7 and Bungie `91 would be a much larger amount of initial capital.

At the very least, I'd have demanded no more than co-ownership of the IP since: A) the development pre-dated the MS deal and B) neither party could exploit or destroy the property without mutual consent. Really, considering that Bungie did have a fairly successful business track record before hand you'd think they'd have thought it out better. For all you know, the company could peak creatively on the Halo series and go downhill from here, but MS could forever reap the benefits of Halo 4-Infinity. Not that this would happen, but hey....

[cookepuss]

Weird. I noticed some older Halo material is credited to Bungie. Newer stuff is credited solely to MS. (Had to check the graphic novel to find a fairly recent non-game Halo copyright notice.) I wonder if the change didn't occur immediately. Maybe it's just a goof on the part of the 3rd parties.

That whole "lock, stock, & barrel" thing always gets me. MS probably owns their whole back catalog now.

[Eclipse]

Probably, though I wouldn't be surprised if Bungie didn't get some kinda royalty for any of the money made by the IP. It's really hard to say without knowing the deal they made with MS either now or when they first got picked up, but needless to say, Bungie isn't the only one that will be working with the Halo IP :P.

Hopefully their new stuff doesn't go downhill like you mentioned. I would hate to see a Rare type situation....Only time will tell. I'm looking forward to their first game announcement though :D

[cookepuss]

Probably, though I wouldn't be surprised if Bungie didn't get some kinda royalty for any of the money made by the IP. It's really hard to say without knowing the deal they made with MS either now or when they first got picked up,
True. I doubt that royalties were involved in the original Y2K acquisition though. They probably just payed a good amount for the whole shebang. Paying out royalties once you owned the company would be pretty odd. Kinda like writing a check to yourself. :)

but needless to say, Bungie isn't the only one that will be working with the Halo IP :P.
Good and bad. On the positive end, you could get a Metroid situation, where the outside developer not only does justice to the series, but even improves on it. In the negative camp, you could end up with another CD-i Zelda fiasco. It all depends on how they choose their 3rd parties. Just look at how Midway has f-ed up the Mortal Kombat franchise with bad conversions.

I would hate to see a Rare type situation....Only time will tell. I'm looking forward to their first game announcement though
I wouldn't count Rare out yet. They did fizzle out, but I blame that on the MS deal. What I wouldn't give for a 2008 update of Battletoads, a game that walked that line between parody and genuine homage. With this whole recent TMNT revival, now would be the time to capitalize on it - provided that they kept that hardcore difficulty. Even on the Gameboy, that game was all sorts of hard.

Anyway, I digress... :)

[Kus Umok]

From what ive understood there will be no Halo 1, 2 or 3 for anything but the Xbox 360 bungie has stood by Xbox from the beggining and if you look on the Halo 3 box its says only for Xbox 360. However all Halo related objects after Halo 1 are owned by microsoft. I just dont want to see such a great game wasted on the Wii. It would be pretty cool to make it for the PS3 but it would defy tradition. Halo wars will, I hope be realeased only for the 360 but also probably for the computer. I havent seen any RTS games in the Wii or the PS3 so I am unable to judge how theyd work out but I think a Wii RTS would really suck.

[cookepuss]

Spoken like somebody who doesn't actually own one. :)

Don't judge Wii games by the 1st gen software. Very few such apps actually push the system, regardless of the platform. There is a certain learning curve for developers. More over, a quality 3D engine can push the hardware above and beyond spec. Just look at how far the DS and Gameboy have been pushed over the years. (If you've seen Quake running on the GBA or Halo running on the DS you'll know what I mean.)

Plus, unless you're a HD junkie, the fact that Wii doesn't have to push 1080 level res isn't such a bad thing where a port is concerned. It may not look as sharp as hi-def, but the overhead (RAM, bandwidth, etc) is lower - making a port not entirely impossible.

I have access to a lot of game systems so I have no vested interest in taking a pro-Wii stance.


Say what you will, but the Wiimote is perfectly suited to FPS and strategy games. On a console, it is just about as close as you'll ever get to a PC mouse. Really. I often find that the Wiimote is actually more precise than I would have ever expected it to be.


As far as the "Only for XBox 360" thing goes, it is a bit naive to take such claims as anything other than marketing hype. So-called "exclusives" don't mean squat unless it is a title by the console developer themselves or a 2nd party. In the case of Halo, that apparently does mean something. However, the "Only for BlahBlahSystem" isn't an absolute guarantee for other games. Just look at Capcom or Konami to how they handle their exclusives.

"Exclusive" is such a flexible term in the game industry.

In the end, companies go where the money is. It's just that simple. If you've been paying attention to some of the stories coming out of Reuters or NextGen, you'd notice how Wii sales caught the whole industry off guard. They really did.

Some developers may not be impressed by the hardware specs, but the "suits" are definitely impressed by the sales figures, which will ultimately affect software related decisions. Again, it all boils down to money. Companies will always do what is in their best interest financially.

A PS3 port of such a game would indeed look great. The sales numbers just aren't there to support such a decision, especially in territories such as Japan where Sony's console is getting slaughtered - even by their own LastGen offering.

[Masakari]

Microsoft retains the Halo IP rights, although it seems Bungie may continue working on the franchise in the future, as well as 360 games. Personally i don't care either way, but if i owned a company and they wanted out, i wouldn't let them go for free. So obviously i'd retain the Halo IP. MS would never, ever, EVER, let the franchise go into multiplatform territory aka Wii and PS3 (handhelds are another matter).

Bottom line, Halo is Microsoft's. Bungie just wants the freedom to do whatever projects they desire, instead of just doing what MS tells them (ie Halo forever).

[Kus Umok]

Wow... I just got owned. Robert you should be something along the lines of a diplomat/salesman you could convince anyone to do anything. The only two things that I would disagree with would be that the wii mote is Too exact for rts games since you would need to go around clicking on stuff in which case you would need to slow down and click exactly were needed. The second thing is Halo for the PS3... nah, but thats just my personal opinion.