Bungie

BELLEVUE, Wash.--Halo, the multibillion-dollar-grossing video game franchise, set an incredibly high bar for its creator, Bungie, to meet with its next title.

"After Halo, a bunch of us thought, 'What comes next?'" Bungie co-founder Jason Jones told a group of journalists visiting Bungie's Bellevue, Wash., headquarters Wednesday.

Jones and Bungie's leadership, who sold the company to Microsoft in 2000 and then spun it out of the software giant in 2007, wanted to find a project worthy of the groundbreaking work in Halo. They wanted to come up with not just a new game, but a … Read more

There's no official word yet on the release date for the next-generation successors to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but a recent Los Angeles Times article suggests the launch timeframe for the next-generation gaming consoles could happen over the next several years.

The latest rumor originates from a recent lawsuit involving Activision that brought to light details of the company's publishing agreement with game developer Bungie.

The contract, a 10-year deal made between the two companies in 2010, indicates that Activision expects Bungie to launch a sci-fantasy, action shooter game code-named "Destiny" in November 2013 for the Xbox 360 as well as a specifically referenced Xbox 720. A game for the PlayStation 4 would arrive in 2014, as noted in the official agreement between Activision and Bungie.

So did that contract just inadvertently announce when we should expect the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles?… Read more

Famed Halo developer Bungie is working on a new title that could be quite different from what it has offered in the past.

Bungie is working on a massively multiplayer online (MMO) first-person shooter, currently named "Destiny," gaming blog Kotaku is reporting, citing an unnamed source. The source told Kotaku that the title is built on a new graphics engine that Bungie has developed, and will live completely online. The person told the gaming blog that the title is basically a "World of Warcraft in space."

This isn't the first time that rumors have cropped … Read more

In late August, Microsoft permanently banned a number of people who procured illegitimate copies of Halo: Reach and ill-advisedly played them on Xbox Live. Now, the Washington developer has slammed 15,000 players for exploiting the game's credit system.

According to a Bungie employee post on Bungie.net, the developer has reset credit tallies for 15,000 players who have "egregiously" exploited a credit rip-off. The post reads, "Specifically, we targeted an exploit that allowed players to complete a Challenge 20+ times via itentional [sic] network manipulation (i.e., disconnects)."

Bungie did not specify any … Read more

Halo: Reach marks developer Bungie's last entry into one of the most successful franchises in video game history. A prequel to the original Xbox's Halo: Combat Evolved, Reach takes place a few weeks before the events of the first game.

Jeff: The best way to describe Halo: Reach is an all-star game. Developer Bungie has once again crafted a blockbuster title, this time by incorporating every detail that worked in all of the previous Halo games and adding a few new tricks here and there. The end result is a never-redundant, action-packed romp that manages to stay fresh and engaging throughout.

Working with a new graphics engine has rendered some of the best-looking visuals we've seen in a Halo game. Reach finally gives Halo that much-needed graphical bump--something critics of last year's ODST felt hadn't been properly upgraded. The visual improvement also gives the game a grittier look, perhaps because of the additional textures and particles onscreen. We think it delivers a sense of maturity and class to the title, and what better time to do so than in the series' final chapter? … Read more

There's probably no better way to determine who's a hard-core Xbox player and who's not than this: do they play Halo?

On November 15, 2001, the then relatively low-profile video game development studio Bungie, which at the time was owned by Microsoft, released what would become one of the most significant game titles ever--Halo: Combat Evolved.

No one knew it at the time, but this storyline, spelled out in the game's manual--for Microsoft's original Xbox, not the Xbox 360--ushered in what is now nine years and the six titles of what is easily one of … Read more

We're not huge fans of "collector's edition" game boxes, truth be told. More often than not, the extras included just seem silly. It's to our great surprise, then, that we unwrapped the monolithic box of the $80 Halo: Reach Collector's Edition, the deluxe version of the imminent Xbox 360 prequel, and found items inside that were actually both beautifully produced and fun to explore.

You won't find action figures or extra DVDs here--statues and helmets are reserved for the $150 Halo: Reach Legendary Edition. Instead, you'll get the core of what's … Read more

Looking more like a nuclear football than a video game, a packed-to-the-gills press kit for the upcoming Xbox 360 game Halo: Reach showed up in this morning's mail.

Different than the regular ($59), limited ($79), or legendary ($149) versions that will be available starting September 14, this kit consists of a metal briefcase that opens to revel a series of Halo-related items.

Inside, we found a United Nations Space Command folder with press information, a softcover art book titled "Halo Overture", a Halo: Reach Xbox 360 controller, and a tie-in novel, "Halo: The Fall of Reach.&… Read more

Microsoft appears to be staffing up for the next installment in the Halo franchise.

The company has posted more than a dozen Halo-related jobs to its careers Web site this month, most of them in the past few days.

"Do you love Halo? Do you want to be part of the creation of a new game in the Halo universe? Are you a programmer with an interest in animation and cinematics?" reads one of the listings, which seeks out a software development engineer who specializes in animation. "We are gathering an incredible team to help drive the … Read more