Bungie Signs 10-Year Deal With Activision 85
An anonymous reader writes "Infinity Ward may be suing Activision under allegations of low payment and no royalties, but it seems some developers are still happy to work with the publisher — it has just signed a 10-year deal with Bungie, the studio behind the popular Halo series of FPS games. Activision will publish all of Bungie's games in the next decade — although Bungie will own the IP. The terms of the deal are similar to those brokered by former Infinity Ward chiefs Jason West and Vince Zampella when they signed with EA after being fired in March."
Re:Yes... (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is wrong, they've only signed away the publishing rights to their new franchise, not all games. If things with activision go sour they can still go to another publisher and not continue whatever the new franchise is.
Re:The silver lining (Score:3, Informative)
Bungie and Microsoft already agreed to end Bungie's development of the Halo franchise following Reach. Going forward, Halo will be developed by 343 Industries, an internal Microsoft studio. This deal with Activision will not affect Halo at all. It will however see Bungie produce games for consoles other than the 360, as you suggested.
Re:The silver lining (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Which Bungie employees are tied in? (Score:3, Informative)
What is left at MS is just a sell out brand and Halo.
Gaming and marketing for the hardware limited console generation.
Re:Wonder $$ (Score:3, Informative)
Luckily Bungie is sitting on the Myth property, along with ... well, [googles bungie's properties owned] uh, Marathon, and Oni [googles "Oni"]. So unless their plan is to release Myth 4 less than two years after Starcraft II, they'll be building some sort of new property just to generate cash. I'm doubtful if much of the creative staff that built Myth and Halo still work for the company.
Bungie transferred the rights to Myth and Oni to Take-Two Interactive as part of being bought out by Microsoft so those are toast unless they manage to buy them back. Myth 3 was pretty much a disaster so I'm betting they don't bother. Oni was an extremely cool FPS at the time it came out but it also didn't go too far.
I'm on board with Bungie being pretty much dead. Most of their original staff left for more exciting work over the years and they'll have to do a lot of rebuilding. Maybe they'll pull it off but they certainly aren't the same company that innovated with Marathon and Myth years ago.
Why the Infinity Ward comparisons? (Score:3, Informative)
Every time I see this story, there's some ridiculous note about how Activision is screwing Infinity Ward or how Bungie worked to break off from Microsoft, so why would they go back to Activision?
This is a PUBLISHING AGREEMENT. Microsoft owned Bungie, just like Activision *owns* Infinity Ward. A publisher has a degree of control over a developer, yes, but comparing that to an ownership situation like Bungie/MS or IW/Activision is patently absurd. It's not even apples to oranges; it's apples to rocks.
Re:Great! (Score:3, Informative)