umors are floating abound that Halo masterminds Bungie will be leaving Microsoft. The rumor’s source being a reader blog from Seattlepi.com stating that in fact, as of yesterday, Bungie is no longer part of Microsoft. While the majority of Internet denizens are stating that this could never happen and that it’s not true, we’ve heard the opposite. From a source close to Bungie, Game Informer has learned this rumor has some merit. It looks like with Halo 3, Bungie really is finishing the fight.
Our source stated that Bungie is “tired of Making Halo, and didn’t want to do future Halo games.” For an unstated, but significant amount of money, Bungie shareholders bought the studio name back from Microsoft. Our source also revealed that even though Microsoft will retain the rights to Halo, Microsoft also has “the right of first refusal on future games.” This means that Microsoft has the first shot at publishing Bungie’s future titles. How this will come into play if Bungie decides they want future game X to appear on the PlayStation 3 and Wii alongside an Xbox 360 release will make things quite interesting.
We finished the fight. We're outta here.
We contacted Microsoft, and their boilerplate statement basically skirts the issue.
“There’s been no such announcement. We continue to celebrate the tremendous success of the global phenomenon that is Halo 3.”
After every Halo release, members of Bungie have departed to form their own development houses such as Certain Affinity and Wideload Studios. Why would Microsoft actually let go of the company who single-handedly made Xbox what it is today is the big question. And for that, Microsoft nor Bungie have revealed a true answer.
We’ll have more on this story as it breaks.