Microsoft Sued Over Mobile Halo Title

GamesIndustry.biz reports on a lawsuit filed by French developer In-Fusio against Microsoft. The company, which specializes in games for moblie phones, was apparently slated to develop a title in the Halo universe. Instead, they've filed suit, claiming that Bungie's parent company refuses to sign off on design documents, holding up the game's overall development process. In return, In-Fusio is now refusing to pay a reported $500,000 to the company. Microsoft sees this as a good time to end the agreement. From the article: "The developer now believes the Xbox manufacturer has purposefully ignored efforts to create a title, stating in the suit: 'Microsoft has thwarted In-Fusio's efforts to develop Halo under the agreement ... Indeed, in the last 11 months, Microsoft has approved no fully developed In-Fusio game designs; ignoring and then refusing to accept In-Fusio's game design concepts with little or no explanation and leaving In-Fusio little basis to revise its concepts to obtain Microsoft's approval.'"

what do you expect

[rootofevil]

when you dance with the devil?

a greedy monopolistic devil at that.

Re:

[the eric conspiracy]

Dancing with the French can be bad too. The combination is a marriage made in hell.

Not what I'd expect.

[cgenman]

Not to be too Pro-Microsoft, but I've always found their games division to be really good to work with. At heart they're a bunch of game geeks who are thrilled that they've got the juggernaut to bankroll whatever it is they want to do. And, generally, they seem to want to fund nifty stuff. From a communication standpoint as a platform company they've been every bit as good about communication as Sony and Nintendo, and in certain respects better (in others, worse. Each has their quirks). But, of course,

Apparently...

[LikeTheSearchEngine]

Apparently, "Your idea is crap," doesn't translate well into French.

Re:Apparently...

[j00r0m4nc3r]

"Votre idée est merde"

Re:Apparently...

[The_K4]

"You see, it's like wiping your ass with silk, I love it."

Re:Apparently...

[drinkypoo]

Yes, that was my first thought. This is a non-story. It's an accusation and it has no Microsoft rebuttal. We have no idea what the fuck is going on so this story is going to be 100% speculation and rampant fanboyism. I dislike Microsoft as much as the next guy, maybe more, but I like to have actual, valid reasons to bash them. Fortunately for me there are many of those so I don't just have to pretend I'm Dvorak and spew complete nonsense all day.

If you google around you'll find about ten copies of the same story, all cut and pasted from the same source. This is not a story, it's an Infusio press release... at least, it is as far as I can tell. In-fusio's website's press link goes to someplace that doesn't look to ever have been updated. They seem like amateurs to me. The In-Fusio games site is a gigantic pile of flash crap that never actually even loaded for me (I got a page that looks like a dreamsicle, with white down the middle and orange down the sides, but no content.)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

When MS says something is crap, it is either really good or OMGWTFBBQ-bad!

Re:

[Chris Burke]

In French the only grammatical way to translate "We don't think Halo should be full of mimes and Jerry Lewis" is to remove the negative.

Halo on a Cell?

[D4rk Fx]

I can't imagine that Halo would be a particularly fun game to play on a cell phone. Most cells have cludgey controls that translate into a horrible game experience.

Re:

[Pojut]

Ever play Doom RPG? Fantastic. Granted the original doom was much simpler than halo, but still...using a similar interface, they could make halo quite interesting

Re:

[LearningHard]

Agreed, I have a feeling the designs being submitted sucks. The good ol' developers can't take that so they are sueing.

For some reason this type of thing reminds me of the looters in Atlas Shrugged.

Re:

[Zex_Suik]

true, but if a call came in the caller's photo id could be superimposed onto a game element, like, let's say, the bad guy's face?

Re:

[9mm Censor]

Doom RPG with Halo skins and story.

Re:

[Green Monkey]

Halo on a Cell? Nah, MS would never support the PS3!

welcome to the world of game development

[Warbringer87]

Then again, nobody can really judge this because we don't know about the games they were suggesting. MS might have been right in not signing off, the game ideas may really have been that bad. Or In-Fusio might be right about MS ignoring them. Have to wonder where this one will go.

Re:

[Thansal]

My thoughts exactly.

TFA really has no information in it. basicly it boild down to "They told us that our stuff sucked but didn't tell us anything else, so we broke the contract, and now want to sue them for breakign the contract".

Untill there are details I will with hold judgment on either side.

Maybe it sucked?

[phalse phace]

Maybe their designs sucked arse, or maybe MS decided to scrap the whole Mobile Halo idea....

Trademark Protection

[biocute]

It will be very difficult to TXT every mobile phone user and ask them to not utter the word 'harlo' over the phone without playing the game, in order to ensure the HALO trademark is not misused by being used generically.

This reminds me of another cell phone thing

[erroneus]

I don't feel like digging up the details, but I believe the name "Orange" was used in the discussion where a cell phone maker was persuaded to partner up with Microsoft where Microsoft had some sort of approval or other thing like that delaying the other company's progress. This forced a default by the other company and then Microsoft assumed the technology developed by the other company as a result of the default.

It has been a few years so my memory is a bit hazy, but I'll bet I'm not the only one recalling this...

Halo on French Cells

[forgotmynameagain]

To answer the phone in French people say "Allo" and it sounds exactly like "Halo".

Imagine the confusion :

dring... dring...
-"Allo?"
-"No, I don't want to play Halo right now."

Re:

[grolschie]

To answer the phone in French people say "Allo" and it sounds exactly like "Halo".

Huh? "Ah-lo" does not at all sound like "Hay-lo". ??!!?