Everytime I hear a company say they will stop making a multi million selling franchise I have to laugh. Why would you abandon endless profit? The Halo series is insanely profitable, and It's a cash cow you would never want to give up. Especially if your Microsoft and It's your best selling franchise.

Hideo Kojima wanted MGS4 to be his last, but guess what? He couldn't. MGS4 carried the company (profit wise) some quarters ago. Can you imagine Bungie game sales if they were to make something not named Halo? It would have to be something with a stupid amount of hype (which would cost them a lot in marketing) and also come off successful. If a new IP were to bomb Bungie would lose out on quite a bit of money when they could simply make Halo Kart or something else and sell boat loads.

Yes, eventually someday a name will only get you so far or sales will stagnate (see current Madden sales versus old Madden sales, or Activision's butchering of Guitar Hero) but right now with a expansion selling over 2.2 million in a week It's pretty apparent that the Halo name is going to sell anything. Even a Halo RTS sold pretty damn real considering It's a console RTS that no one seemed to like... till Halo Wars came out.

Bungie needs Microsoft as much as Microsoft needs Bungie. They will continue to have a great partnership and continue making loads of money and great games from that partnership.

Lets hope it continues that way.

Just to clarify for those wondering. The only way Bungie can make a multiplat game is if MS allows it. MS has the right of first refusal on any intelectual property from Bungie, that was a big part of the seperation.

Chances are there will never be a multiplat game from Bungie.

Plus there's the emotional attachment, which i wouldn't discount.  ALOT of people at Bungie have worked on Halo most or all of their career...it's hard to jsut walk away from that.  I think M$ would be crazy to let Bungie walk away, and that's why I think a MMO would join them at the hip...MSGS taking the responsibility for O&M, while Bungie working on new content to the game.  That way, Nexbox has a killer app on launch.

Personally I think MS should farm off the series to other independent developers and let them kind of give their twist on a part of the story... it would be interesting to see someone like Criterion or Valve do a game or see Epic do some thing with Halo. Hell I wonder what Tim Shaffer would do with it. It would be a boon for a studio to get to develop for the biggest franchise this generation.

They could pull a TMNT: Smash Up. They know how to make Halo, so they could make a game called "Evolved Combat." It would be a Halo clone and multiplatform.

Yeah, I agree. Reach is going to be massive. I don't think Microsoft is strong arming them, I mean, they're giving Bungie excellent support from what I can see, just like Insomniac's relationship with Sony.

Lmao, yeah. All they need to do to be sure of that is make a mode where the people fight each other in an arena rather than race (forgot what it's called in Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing).