Breaking News: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6260577.html?tag=latestheadlines%3Btitle%3B1

At least some of you must have heard about the whole Activision-Infinity Ward madness. Well to sum it up, there is no IW anymore, now it's Respawn Entertainment with a publishing contract with EA. Activision is sueing Jason West and Vince Zampella, the CEO's of IW, and they're sueing back to earn the rights to the Modern Warfare name, and 38 other IW employess are also sueing for 625 million dollars because Activision withheld about 100 million dollars that belonged to IW. That's about it. And now with that article, we know that Activision signed a 10-year publishing contract with Bungie, of all companies. I REALLY don't know exactly what to make of this. So please give me your opinions on this whole subject.

End of an era, eh? Even though they've been independent for a while, now truly marks the departure from MS. No more exclusive 360 games. And I say 'games', but I mean Halos cos turns out that's all they made for MS.

I find that sad. Because when you look back, they look like a one-trick pony under MS. Part of me has to ask if that's all they were willing to give MS or if that's all MS were asking for. Anyway, I have little doubt the Halo franchise will suffer some from the lack of Bungie. I would love for MS to just move on to creating the next big franchise, but the existence of 343 and the lack of a prolific first-party says they're ready to keep juicing despite how not as great the games will be from now on.

To be honest, I am kind of curious to see what games we can be expecting from Bungie now. I mean the Halo franchise is extremely successful and it's only on Microsoft Platforms. Who knows what kind of success it'll have if it goes multiplatform. At the moment, I honestly don't know if I should be expecting a shooter. It can be anything. Actually it could even be some kind of collaboration between Bungie and Blizzard (because it's a part of Activision) and they make RPG's and RTS games. So once again I am at a loss for words. The possibilites are limitless. But there's also Respawn which has pretty much all the former Infinity Ward employees so we can expect great games from both developers. It is an end of an era, indeed.

It'll definitely be a shooter of some kind. Can't see them tackling anything else with this much vigour. They're good at making shooters and they know enough to stick to their strengths.

What's interesting to me is Bungie's deal with Activision is for multiple iterations of a single franchise. So I guess this looks to be their multiplatform solution to Halo. And I think because of how Bungie works you should be prepared to see this franchise and only this franchise for the next ten years, little or no deviations. If it succeeds of course.

But I do wonder wtf happened to the deal they were supposed to have with MS. The one where MS gets first dibs on publishing Bungie's work?

But I do wonder wtf happened to the deal they were supposed to have with MS. The one where MS gets first dibs on publishing Bungie's work?

Bungie, unless they do some serious backpedaling or negotiate a new deal with MS, could find themselves in a breach of contract with MS over this. Guess we'll just have to wait and see, yes?

Breaking News: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6260577.html?tag=latestheadlines%3Btitle%3B1

At least some of you must have heard about the whole Activision-Infinity Ward madness. Well to sum it up, there is no IW anymore, now it's Respawn Entertainment with a publishing contract with EA. Activision is sueing Jason West and Vince Zampella, the CEO's of IW, and they're sueing back to earn the rights to the Modern Warfare name, and 38 other IW employess are also sueing for 625 million dollars because Activision withheld about 100 million dollars that belonged to IW. That's about it. And now with that article, we know that Activision signed a 10-year publishing contract with Bungie, of all companies. I REALLY don't know exactly what to make of this. So please give me your opinions on this whole subject.
West and Zampella sued first and Activision counter-sued the day after. Basically Activision fired the two for looking for new contract deals with other publishers. Looking for a new job while currently employed is insubordination, apparently. The whole process of Activision trying to find a way to fire the two and screw them out of their royalties is just one big dick move.

Activision later gave the royalties they owed the two to the remaining employees of Infinity Ward. The public statement they made about this was incredibly childish (it even had smilies and shit).

Soon after THAT 38 or 39 current and past employees of IW sued Activision for holding out on royalties so that the team was pretty much forced to make MW3 (when they were already forced to make MW2).

Anyway, the majority of the original employees of IW are still there. I think the number of people who have left is around 20 and only a few of those have made their way to Respawn. Respawn isn't just Infinity Ward with a new name. I think I remember a statement they made recently they don't know what they're going to do with the studio, despite their history with FPS games.

IW are basically dead, though. I wouldn't expect MW3 to be any good. In fact most analysts suspect IW will just be broken down and the remaining employees spread out into other developers working on the franchise.

Aaand with 3 new CoD games (one being a third person adventure) coming out in the next two years, I think it's safe to say the franchise Activision are ready to milk the franchise like they've done with Guitar Hero. It's dead.

Bungie, unless they do some serious backpedaling or negotiate a new deal with MS, could find themselves in a breach of contract with MS over this. Guess we'll just have to wait and see, yes?

From what I've read they still have their deal MS to publish games and will have it even after Halo: Reach launches. MS owns a very small part of Bungie and if they see that there's something fishy going on with their assosciation with Activision, they'll crank open those wallets and Bungie will run right back.

I thought this was one of the rare quality PA strips of late.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CorruptCorporateExecutive

If the entry on Activision doesn't make you want to find the CEO of activision and spit in his face personally, you're a monster.

We all do. I like how all this drama is going on, Activision is being sued from multiple directions, but they have no problems signing 10-year contracts with Bungie and releasing trailer for more Call of Duty games. I think Treyarch is a decent company so we'll see what happens with the new COD game.

As far as the deal with Bungie goes, I think that Bungie just scored the best deal they could possibly imagine. And the circumstances were perfect for this. Activision was suspecting Infinity Ward was looking for a new publishers, they got sued, then they sued too, and then got sued one more time. Making this deal with Bungie redirected the spotlight from all the drama with Infinity Ward. Also Infinity Ward was the one that wanted exact same deal from Activision but never got it. EA was the one they turned to. But now, Bungie was having the same problems with Microsoft, as Infinity Ward had with Activision. They wanted to own their creatios, their IP's, be independent, appeal to a wide audience but that was impossible while they were still with MS. So, they turned to Activision who undoubtedly is a popular publisher. So Bungie gets to make games the way they want to, they will own them, they will be on multiple platforms AND they're probably gonna all sell well, seeing how popular Halo got, a game that's exclusive to a single platform. I say good for them.

Too bad Halo sucks (except 2).

eh, who cares, Halo blows anyways! Im just glad that MS is starting to lose their exclusivity grip on some of their 3rd party developers!

I don't know why people are saying Bungie can't make anything besides FPS. They've made RTS computer games (Myth 2: Soulblighter was fun and challenging if I remember correctly). Don't forget Oni, a 3rd person adventure game! They'll do other genres just fine, imo.

I'm personally not saying that they can't, but if they truly want a franchise fit to outdo Halo (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28311/Bungie_New_Project_To_Be_Even_Better_And_Bigger_Th an_Halo.php), it's gotta be a shooter or in some way involve shooting, especially in a multiplayer arena.

The shooter is the most overrated popular genre in gaming right now. And since they have had overwhelming success making them, it makes sense to make another.


eh, who cares, Halo blows anyways! Im just glad that MS is starting to lose their exclusivity grip on some of their 3rd party developers!

6-month and 1-year exclusivity deals aren't much of a grip imo.

Halo was supposed to be an RTS game too, until they changed their minds and decided to make a first-person-shooter.