Bungie and Activision Announce Exclusive, Worldwide Partnership

[twesterm]

Brennan said:

twesterm said:

I love announcements like these because it really shows the hypocrisy of some people.

Yesterday, if you asked a PS3 fan of Halo and Bungie it was they make the same game over and over again and that game sucks.

Today, if you ask that same person about Bungie and Halo, they'll say Halo is a decent game but OMG BUNGIE ROCKS!  MS IS DOOMED!

All in all though, complete surprise announcement. I assume Activision originally wanted to save this for E3 but since they have had so much bad PR lately they decided they needed something big to divert attention away from the Infinity Ward fiasco. Still, good for Bungie and hopefully good for gamers.

You can think losing Bungie is a huge blow for MS without loving Bungie games.

I think Bungie is very talented but I don't love FPS that much on consoles. No hypocrisy involved here.

Whether you think Bungie games are crap or not is irrelevant. The fact is they mattered a lot for MS as a dev.

 

 

The Halo name is what matters for MS, not-so-much Bungie.  Don't get me wrong, Bungie full of hugely talented people and they are the reason the Halo name matters, but MS could put crap in a box and write Halo on it and it would make money (unless of course you get an overly expensive studio making something completely different to crap in that box ).  As long as the Halo game caters to the Halo audience, it will sell.

I don't really see this as a huge blow to MS, they still have their exclusives and it really is time to move on from Halo.  Sure, there will probably still be spin-offs but it should be obvious MS is already working on making the next Halo.

-edit-

And I feel I should clarify-- I agree that losing Bungie isn't optimal in any way at all for MS, it doesn't spell out their doom.  While Halo has been exclusive for MS, Bungie hasn't been for a while and I have to assume they're at least somewhat competent and have been prepared for this.