Source: www.videogamer.com

Bethesda on Bungie's next game publisher

Believes Sony is one of a handful of publishers who could afford to publish the game, but thinks it's unlikely.

Posting on his personal blog, Bethesda Game Studios production director Ashley Cheng has said he can "only imagine how much it will cost to snag" Bungie's next title.

Because of this he believes there are only a handful of publishers who can "afford to publish" the game. These include Microsoft, Activision, Ubisoft, EA Partners, Bethesda and Sony. He adds that Sony would be "interesting. Unlikely".

Speaking to Eurogamer.net Bungie's Lars Bakken said that a publishing deal for its next game is close to being agreed.

"I think internally we'll know sometime soon. I don't handle these things, but I'd imagine we're going to know way before we make the public announcement of who's handling that! But sure, I think those talks are, I guess, close," he said.

Bungie is currently working on Halo 3: ODST, for release on September 22, and will follow this with Halo: Reach in 2010. Cheng believes that once these games are done, the independent studio will not owe Microsoft anything more.

"I suspect Bungie only owes Microsoft two more games and they're done. Halo ODST and Reach and that's that," said Cheng. No more Halo for Bungie."

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Will probably be Microsoft.

But Bungie + Sony would be interesting.

I'm guessing Microsoft. Sony would be hilarious, though. THAT would be an internet implosion

hmm imagine a Halo RPG Open world style... I will definitely buy that first day.

Yeah, Bethesda and Sony can afford it, but Nintendo, the publishers with the largest cash flow, cannot.

Makes so much sense.

Seeing that the game is more than likely going to be a FPS game, why would they want to dev on Wii?

That's beside the point. Bethesda implies Nintendo cannot afford to publish the game whereas Bethesda and Sony can.

Nintendo published GoldenEye and Perfect Dark on the N64, BTW. I'm not saying they are likely to publish a Bungie game, but Bethesda worded it terribly.

Nintendo can afford it, but Bungie isn't in the business of making games for the Wii.  Nor the PS3 really, however it's a lot more likely due to the closer similarities between the 360 and PS3 than the 360 and Wii.

It amazes me at how many people get so upset about Nintendo being snubbed.  Nintendo is and always has been a company that values (and makes it glaringly obvious) their first-party works over anything else (as they should).  Not to mention, they went off of the conventional path with the Wii.  While the architecture for the PS3 might be complicated, developing on the PS3 and 360 is the same as developing on any game console in the past.  The 360 and PS3 are nothing more than upgraded versions of past gaming consoles.  The Wii, however, it's a new branch in the gaming console tree.  Developers can't lead on the console ever unless it's an exclusive, and even porting games from the 'traditional consoles' (360, PS3) is quite the task with regards to the differences in the Wii.  Look at how many games are made to have 'special versions' for the Wii, with (nearly) identical versions on the PS3 and 360.  Look at Madden, Dead Space, Need For Speed, etc.

That said, I don't see Nintendo pumping money into 3rd party games.  That statement may be refuteable, but please tell me if I am wrong.  They aren't going to put money into 3rd party games when they probably spend a lot less money developing first party games and stand to make a ton more money on them.  Not just a little more money, a LOT more money.

What is keeping Nintendo alive?  First party games.  That statement sounds funny being that Nintendo isn't in any kind of danger right now, but that's it.  They have a tried and true formula, they aren't going to go give bungie 50 million dollars when it's highly likely they'll never make the money back. 

Remember, Microsoft has the right of first refusal to anything Bungie makes. So, basically, if it looks good, they'll publish it, but otherwise it's not even worth publishing.

It would be very interesting if it was Sony that snagged this one, but i think it is more than likely going to be someone like Activision that get the deal!