Bungie + Activision + ??? = profit?

[Kornman00]

BUNGIE AND ACTIVISION ANNOUNCE EXCLUSIVE, WORLDWIDE (10 year) PARTNERSHIP (http://www.bungie.net/news/content.aspx?type=news&cid=25920)

Bungie's next big thing will now be able to target all platforms of their choice with AV as their publisher. I really don't know what to make of this...especially since it's AV. Sure, they'll just be the publisher and PR handler for Bungie's NBT...but AV?

I'm blank.

[Futzy]

Can't tell if its good or bad.

[=sw=warlord]

Why couldn't they partner up with someone decent like valve?
I don't know what to say, with all the IW stuff floating about it seems pretty clear AV are all for screwing over developers.

[SiriusTexra]

Fucking idiots.


They should have jumped with Valve.


Well, at least with AV we can hope to see PROPER pc ports.


Not sure about modding/mapping though...

[DEElekgolo]

Why.
Stop that bungie.

[Bhamid]

I will laugh so hard if Bungie get screwed over in a few years time...

[Kornman00]

Could have been worse I think...

Could have been Ubisoft :ugh:.

Well, hope this Aerospace thing turns out decent of a moddable engine. I'm sure whatever it is, it will last the 10 year period of their contract.

[neuro]

goddamnit.. just.. goddamnit.

[jcap]

Guys,

Valve does not publish games. In fact, Valve looks to EA to publish hard copies of their game. Valve also doesn't want anything to do with Halo, and I highly doubt they'd want to port a game. Hell, they can't even finish Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

I kinda wish they went with EA like Valve instead of Activision, but I am glad that IF a game comes to the PC, it probably won't use the EA download manager. Instead, it would probably use Steam. As long as Bungie was smart with the agreement, it should mean publishing rights ONLY. I HIGHLY doubt they want to put themselves through the same bullshit they went through with Microsoft again, especially after seeing what Activision did to Infinity Ward.

But you have to remember: Activision is a publishing company. It also has several subsidiaries, like Infinity Ward. Activision was in the position to boss IW around, and they own the COD series too.

My guess is that this is just a publishing deal. Bungie wants to make their next game reach as many people as possible, like the COD series. If they can expand past the Xbox, it's better for everyone. Bungie isn't desperately looking for a developer, like a small start-up studio would be doing, so they aren't willing to settle for anything to get their game out, even if the deal is equivalent to a dick up their ass. Bungie has something that Activision WANTS, and they hopefully realized that they have much more to lose if they didn't conform to Bungie's wants.

I still think they should have told Activision to fuck themselves after this IW mess, just because of their blatant disrespect for developers.

[annihilation]

I hope they don't get screwed over like IW did.

[Con]

I wouldn't worry guys.


We chose to partner with Activision on our next IP because of their global reach, multi-platform experience and marketing expertise.

We are still Bungie, still independent, and now we are free to bring our stories to an ever bigger audience.

They're still independent so they'll be making their own decisions hopefully. They won't be pulled into any of the madness that IW was, and I doubt Activision wants that kind of bad PR to happen again.

[Cagerrin]

FUCK

are they out of their goddamn minds

[ejburke]

Activision can't fire anyone at Bungie. And I'm pretty sure Bungie keeps ownership of the new IP. They signed a good contract, whereas IW signed a bad one.

[Cagerrin]

Problem is, it's activision. I have a terrible, terrible feeling that Bungie's about to get raped. Unlike Infinity Ward, they seem to have remembered the lube, but I don't see it making a great difference.

[ICEE]

If it gets halo to PC again then I'm all for it.

[Cagerrin]

Nah, this is for Bungie's next IP.

Unless Microsoft decides it needs to compete or something, I doubt we'll see H3 on PC ever.

[Con]

If it gets halo to PC again then I'm all for it.
Who said anything about Halo?

[Inferno]

As long as there next game comes to PC WITH a editing kit, I don't care who they partner with.

[Timo]

As long as there next game comes to PC WITH a editing kit, I don't care who they partner with.

.

[ejburke]

So, this deal is only applicable to the new IP. Theoretically, they can do other projects for other publishers, though not any time soon.

I really don't see what can go wrong. The only thing Activision can do is sue Bungie. They can't directly intervene. No internal investigations or security thugs camped outside the studio. No whoring out the IP to Treyarch. Seems like everything is kosher. If IW had it this good, they'd still be happily under Activision's umbrella.

[Phopojijo]

Bungie + Activision appears to be the same as iD + Activision in terms of the contract they signed (at least according to Bungie's press release) with the exception of exclusive distribution rights for 10 years (where iD did it game-by-game). IW was more of a 2nd-party developer to Activision.

All that said I expect -- if Bungie's smart -- they'd have more than a few escape clauses in the contract.

[English Mobster]

Bungie's next game:
Halo of Duty: Reach.
(Just kidding)
Also, I'm curious and haven't received an update on this: Is Infinity Ward still doing MW3?

[teh lag]

http://halo.bungie.org/misc/bungie_activision_interview_20100429.html
It seems to be some sort of interview with Bungie about this.


Brian Jarrard: Lots of old guard folks.

It's a brand new action game universe.

"[complaint]"

[English Mobster]

Damn, I just got done reading that and was about to post.
That is among the strangest interviews I've ever read. It's like someone got a bunch of Modacity members in a chat room and recorded the chat logs as an "interview".
Still, I believe they mentioned in there that Bungie gets to name pricing points. No $60 for PC bullshit again.
Let's hope the PC version (should they make it) remains DRM-free.

[jcap]

Activision can't make Bungie do anything. Activision doesn't even own anything Bungie does. Bungie just needs to use Activision for the next 10 years. Is that so hard?

[Dwood]

Okay guys so I've done some reading up and think I know why Bungie did this deal with Activision instead of, say, EA.

One of the first things I would like to throw out there is that the (now resigining) CEO of Activision was completely and utterly nuts-o, and was probably his sole doing for the whole fiasco of IW.

Here are some quotes and commentary from me!



They understand the kind of universe we want to make, and what it will mean to our fans. And they are happy not to stand in our way.


Look at the E3 demos for Halo 1 and 2. Look what happened to them AFTER each e3 demo. I honestly think that it was Microsoft that although streamlining the game, took the game out of what the original developers wanted out of it. (Like Blind wolves) MS had (and has) no actual respect for the Halo IP and are just using it to make a crap-ton of money for the Xbox. Bungie doesn't want the same thing to happen in their Universes, by having full control over it.

"They are happy to not stand in our way." Just look at the design and story decisions MS made and are making with Halo. Do you honestly think Bungie is glad MS made those decisions?

They want what comes out of the game and its universe to be their decision. That being said:


Did you ever meet with now ex-CEO Mike Griffith? Was he an initial supporter of all this?


Joe Staten: No. But we did spend considerable time meeting and working with the Activision executive team.

That means that the Activision Board of Directors [For the past NINE MONTHS] wanted the deal, and the only person truly opposing it on that high of a level was the (now defunct) CEO.

One more thing that makes me happy about this deal is the following quote:

(on a question about whether or not the bungie studio was on board with the deal)


Actually yes, it went over very well, once you really look at the deal itself it's hard to argue with it and how it aligns with our priorities as a studio and our vision for the future.

(in replying to the same question, diff person:)


Joe Staten: Not just on board, but excited. Because they knew we had finally achieved our goals set down when we spun out from MS: remain independent, own our creations, have the financial support to do what we do best: make kick ass games that we (and you!) like to play

[Kornman00]

Wish I worked at Bungie. Then I could be on board with the rest of the team. Instead, I'm stuck here with you guys :ugh:

;p

[annihilation]

Wish I worked at Bungie. Then I could be on board with the rest of the team. Instead, I'm stuck here with you guys :ugh:

;p

:saddowns:
We're just as good.


What if Bungie made MW3?

[Kornman00]

Nah, they're making Call of Duty: Interstellar Warfare..."IW" :tinfoil:

[English Mobster]

:saddowns:
We're just as good.


What if Bungie made MW3?
I told my stepbro (Halo hater, COD nut) that Bungie had signed a deal with Activision and he immediately thought they would be making MW3 and ran screaming out of the room, yelling about how they're going to ruin it.
I laughed.
Chances are, Bungie isn't going to touch COD. They want to do their own thing, without following the rules of a universe someone else had thought up.
Plus their new game has been on the table before they even knew there was going to BE a MW3.

[ejburke]

Now that Bungie is in the best position a game developer can be, this side of Valve, they're going to devote all their resources to THEIR property. It really doesn't make sense anymore to devote millions of man-hours to projects they don't get to "keep" and don't have as much control over.

I'm just hoping this new IP is Bungie's best yet. I think it will have to be to win over the stink-eyed Sony and PC fanboys.

[LlamaMaster]

I honestly couldn't care less. Bungie is just another mainstream dev milking their franchise in my eyes. All this does is make them even more mainstream...

[JackalStomper]

Thanks for the super post dwood, cleared quite a few things up. Unfortunately this does nothing to alleviate my concerns.

You see IW wasn't owned by Activision when it made CoD 1... let's just hope Bungie isn't swayed by a fat wad of cash the way IW was.

[Kornman00]

Bungie has had experience with being held back and controlled by a big publisher. They always reflect on their experiences and see what they do to make the next time around better. Going and staying independent will always be one of them. They already got the funding from all the time spent working for MS and producing Halo, there really shouldn't ever be a wad of cash big enough to make Jason or Harold fuck over the studio. The former co-founded the place (thus an extra sense of connection to it; like his child) and the latter...well, he's Harold. I've only heard stories and met him in passing.

Bungie is starting a new. They originally started Halo and didn't plan for it to become 3 games and didn't expect it to be as big. They now have a lot of experience with the ropes of the industry, they really will have no problem climbing the next franchise, which will be theirs and theirs alone, to the top. It won't be like they're "porting Master Chief" to the PS3, it will be a clean slate for their game and they'll get to develop the game's universe on the premise that it will last AT LEAST 10 years (so less plot holes, in theory).


Also, Bungie isn't going to touch COD. I guess that turned into a bad joke.

[Llama Juice]

That "interview" was special haha.

The light hearted nature of it though made it easier to accept the four serious lines of text in it.

[Phopojijo]

They said new IP. Also -- Bungie+Activision apparently is closer to iD+Activision than I realized... they only have 10-year exclusivity with that franchise, not everything Bungie does.

[jcap]

They said new IP. Also -- Bungie+Activision apparently is closer to iD+Activision than I realized... they only have 10-year exclusivity with that franchise, not everything Bungie does.
Ah, now that's really good. But that's what I expected when I heard the news. Partnering with a company doesn't mean that they now own you and everything you do.

[Kornman00]

Bungie is just with AV for the sex.

IW however, made the wrong choice of marrying AV in the state of New York (or anywhere else where the spouse can rob you of your shit).

Enjoy the sex Bungie.