Bungie “close” to Securing Publishing Deal with New IP
Bungie has confirmed to Eurogamer that the developer is “close” to securing a publishing deal to a brand new IP being developed by the studio, according to Lars Bakken.
The info comes by way of a press event held for Halo 3: ODST in London.
I think internally we’ll know sometime soon. I don’t handle these things, but I’d imagine we’re going to know way before we make the public announcement of who’s handling that! But sure, I think those talks are, I guess, close.
The new IP has been kept secret, but development for it has been at work for sometime now. The official announcement came last year when Halo 3: ODST was revealed at the Tokyo Game Show. It’ll be their first game, which doesnt have the word “Halo” for a decade and their 3rd most likely since they were released from their contract as a 1st party studio with Microsoft Games Studio.
Bakken also went on record to state that ODST and Halo: Reach, the Halo game set before Halo: Combat Evolved revealed at E3, will be the last projects they will do on the Halo universe.
“In terms of a platform for Halo games made by Bungie, yes. I can’t answer that question for Microsoft though. Whether they have something in the works or not, I don’t know if they’re actually ready to talk about it yet, but in terms of Bungie-produced Halo games, ODST and then Reach is probably all you’re going to get.
All control of the IP is being handed by a new studio, 343 Industries. Set up by MGS specfically for the Halo IP, it’ll be led by former Bungie alumni, Frankie O’Connor. Former id vet Corrine Yu and Koji Pro old timer Ryan Payton are also apart of the studio, assumingly for the Halo Chronicles project we’ve heard very little about.
There is some new screens and video about on ODST, we’ll have them up tomorrow.