Bungie split with microsoft

[Kamui]

M U L T I

- Bungie announced the company has officially splited from Microsoft and become and independent developer. Microsoft will continue to hold a minority stake in the new Bungie LLC.
- Here are the latest Japanese console hardware sales for the week of Sept 24 - 30, 2007:

PSP - 102,809 [1,861,320]
NDS Lite - 72,895 [5,487,649]
Wii - 24,143 [2,694,454]
PlayStation 3 - 13,105 [712,108]
PlayStation 2 - 12,980 [596,915]
Xbox 360 - 5,215 [150,789]
GB Micro - 229 [26,485]
GameCube - 73 [9,785]
GBA SP - 49 [20,723]
GBA - 41 [968]
NDS - 30 [2,816]
- Here are the latest Japanese console software sales for the week of Sept 24 - 30, 2007:

Halo 3 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) - 58,672
Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon: Toki no Tankentai (NDS, Nintendo) - 55,438 [441,000]
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP, Square Enix) - 54,240 [649,000]
Tamagotchi no Puchi Puchi Omisecchi: Mina San Kyu (NDS, Bandai Namco) - 53,915
Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon: Yami no Tankentai (NDS, Nintendo) - 45,743 [389,000]
Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd (PS2, Sony) - 31,328
KanKen DS 2 + Jouyou Kanji Jiten (NDS, Rocket Co.) - 28,301
Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX: Tag Force 2 (PSP, Konami) - 28,189
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PS3, Spike) - 26,563
Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops+ (PSP, Konami) - 25,348 [119,000]
The Legend of Heroes: Sora no Kiseki FC (PSP, Falcom)
Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus (PS2, Sega)
Pachislot Series Vol 11: CR Neon Geneses Evangelion (PS2, D3 Pub)
Mario Party 8 (Wii, Nintendo)
Mario Striker Charged (Wii, Nintendo)
English Inspection DS (NDS, Rocket Co.)
Gnabaru watashi no Kakei Diary (NDS, Nintendo)
Mario Kart DS (NDS, Nintendo)
New Super Mario Bros. (NDS, Nintendo)
Wii Sports (Wii, Nintendo)
- Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto announced the company will strengthen development on PlayStation 3 and they are aware the PS2 market remain further attractive. Capcom wants to concentrate on multi-platform development strategy for PS3 and Xbox 360.

- Marvelous Entertainment president Yasuhiro Wada mentioned that the next Harvest Moon title will have online functions, 2 to 8 players can visit the same city in the game. The platform is undecided yet.

- Midway announced they have shipped 1.5 million copies of Straglehold for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

W i i

- Nintendo announced they received 700,000 pre-orders of the Wii action game Super Mario Galaxy in Japan, the game will be available in Japan on November 1, 2007.

X B O X 3 6 0

- Microsoft announced the first week sales of Halo 3 has passed US$300 millions, and the sales of Xbox 360 has doubled. So far over 2.7 million users or 33% of Xbox Live users played Halo 3 over Xbox Live. Halo 3 has sold over 2.6 million copies in US.

P S P

- Enterbrain reported that Sony has sold over 580,000 units of Slim PSP in Japan since its launch with Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII in Japan on September 13, 2007. A majority of buyers were women.

Along with some misc info you can find everything else here http://http://www.the-magicbox.com/game20071005.shtml

[CHRIST]

yeah i heard that awhile back. While they are no longer exclusive, they said they were still going to primarily stay with the 360, but they are allowed to make games for other systems and can actually make the games they want instead of being controlled by MS.

[Zabka]

actually, that's not quite right. MSFT has the right of first refusal on their properties for exclusives while also retaining the rights to Halo.

Inevitably, they will work on other consoles--but initially, my guess is that they will be working on handhelds (where there is no MSFT presence).

MSFT retains a minority interest in the company as an investor. Clearly when MSFT released Bungie, they knew what was in the development pipeline at Bungie and retains their stake there. However, this move allows Bungie to not have to be part of the MSFT bureaucracy operationally. In addition, it enables greater upside to the employees who would likely have left for a smaller company if they weren't allowed to split off anyway. Companies like Bungie are about intellectual capital more so than hard assets. By keeping Halo, MSFT is probably doing the best they could have done in this situation. Otherwise, I would imagine most of the Bungie crew would have just bailed after the Halo3 launch. It's a sound business move that also strips the near term business costs of new development off their books. Bungie employees get free of the bureaucracy and potential upside from new titles, public offerings, etc.