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.

They call it "Bungie’s next big action game universe" so who knows. It seems wierd that they would call it a 10 yr deal instead of a 4 game deal tho. This whole deal is pretty wierd in terms of the normal practices that we are use to seeing.

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.

Except it doesn't work like that in gaming. You can't "buy" a dev unless you've got good relations with them otherwise every dev just leaves the boat and it's over (see infinity ward, no amound of Actibliz money could keep them from leaving). MS having unlimited money is just a myth anyway.

I agree that when you buy the product, what matters is that they're exclusive, not 1st or 3rd party, but look at your list :

1) Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell, Gears, Left 4 Dead, nearly every game in your list is NOT exclusive since you can play them on PC, heck that's what I do, FPS are better on PC anyway (playing Mass Effect on PC right now, great game, but exclusive it is not).

You see ? there's nearly no real exclusive on your list. My PC cost me a few hundred euros and it's a lot more powerful than a 360. It plays most 360 games, just better (better gfx, mouse for FPS, better sound and so on). PS3 / PC gamers have very few reasons to buy a 360, and it's even worse now with Bungie gone.

2) The problem with 3rd parties is sooner or later they're LEAVING (stopping being exclusive). You're losing your exclusivity when they go multi. See Bungie, it's lost for 10 years now as an exclusive provider. That's why Sony buys studios. BUT you've got to keep good relations with them too. Which Sony manages to do. Read what devs say, they basically worship Sony and respect them for being left alone...

MS must stop releasing its big games on PC (which they started to do), but they should also buy studios in my opinions, by first forging long run partnership and good relations with big devs.

Epic could be a great target.

The happy new couple

Harold Ryan got cut off go here if you want to see the rest of his face: http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab8/hobbit_bucket/43669-hi-BungieActivisionE_0127.jpg

Lol @ the fake smiles on this pic. Makes me wonder where his left hand is.

He is trying to get some of that MSFT money out of Ryan's back pocket.

First party doesn't mean shit, it is the brain trust that you invest in.  PC gamers don't have "1st party studios" in a traditional sense and they do just fine.  That's why MS doesn't concentrate on cultivating devs, we live in a free country where people can work where they want to.

You convince devs to work on your platform based on merits - profitability, ease of development, etc.  MS has no problems with any of these, so I don't see why people are concerned, especially since the barrier of entry to develop on MS's platform is significantly smaller.

Furthermore, the name of the studio holds little weight when it really is only a handful of devs (people) out there that really make the differences.  MS isn't domed, they prefer the ecosystem to be grown from the ground up, unlike Sony which likes to do it top down.  This is arguably a better approach, because it preserves developer autonomy and creativity moreso than having to purchase studios to get the results corporate wants.  Japanese companies prefer to exert a large amount of control over their platform, which is the wrong model to pursue - as seen by the Iphone/Apple ecosystem.

Finally, in MS's eyes exclusivity on PC or 360 doesn't matter, it's still their platform.  If they had wanted to push for exclusivity on 360, they would have made DirectX on Xbox a subset and incompatible to the PC version, but they didn't because they wanted easy ports.  All evidence shows that future convergence of the two platforms is very likely.

Bungie is gonna make next COD game and the setting will be in not so distant future...

i can sence some hurt amoungst some users about this deal!