heruamon said:
No, you're mistaken, Microsoft wholly owned Bungie, but they spun them off to avoid a defection. it was making the best out of a bad situation, but still not optimal for M$. "Bungie is an American video game developer founded in May 1991 under the name Bungie Software Products Corporation by two undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones. Originally based in Chicago, the company concentrated primarily on Macintosh games during its first nine years of existence, producing the popular Marathon and Myth series as well as games such as Oni. In 2000, Bungie was acquired by Microsoft, and their current project Halo: Combat Evolved was turned into a first-person shooter and launch title for Microsoft's new Xbox game console. Halo went on to become the Xbox's "killer app", and the game and its two sequels have sold millions of copies. On October 5, 2007, Bungie announced that it had split with Microsoft and become a privately held independent company, Bungie LLC. Despite splitting from Microsoft, the studio will still be producing products for Xbox 360 but is free to develop for other platforms. Bungie is an independent developer, currently based in Kirkland, Washington." |
The question is, why'd they want to defect, as you suppose they did?
Sony seems to have no trouble keeping relatively independent studios under it's control while keeping them happy and producing games at a reasonable pace.
Naughty Dog, Evolution Studios, Incognito, Polyphony Digital, Sony Santa Monica, etc. are all prime examples of this.
