Dani said:
Bungie's new partnership with Activision seems very similar to their relationship with Microsoft after Bungie regained their independence. Activision is fronting the development costs and handling the publishing and marketing costs whilst Bungie is doing what they do best, making new games. Just like the Microsoft agreement, Bungie are under contract "for ten years" and presumably have agreed to make X amount of games with X amount of support for each game within that time frame. The only difference is in relation to ownership of IP, which Bungie will now retain going forward. This means that they will fully control the license, they will have the final say on any games using this IP. If they decide they want branded underwear, it will be Bungie's call, not Activision's.
My biggest concern about the Bungie/Activision partnership is that no matter what, if you do not have a significant amount of capital packed away, the publisher always has the upper hand. I'm sure Bungie has it in their contract that Activision has no control over the content of the games and such, but because Activision controls the money bag, they can stall critical payments to Bungie in an attempt to control Bungie. I'm sure there's been a number of developers that have been bled to death by a publisher stalling or otherwise "losing" payments the developers needed to keep afloat.
I'm sure Bungie has protected themselves as much as possible in their partnership with Activision, but when they're dealing with the publisher equivalent of Lucifer, it's difficult to trust that Activision won't pull something at some point.
All that said, I'm very excited about Bungie's next IP and where they go with it. I'm anxious to see how they take some of the things that have set Halo apart (screenshots, rendered films, Forge, Bungie.net integration with games) and pull that into their next game, which will be multiplatform. I mean, so much of Halo is tied to Bungie.net and your Xbox Live account...It brings to mind the question of how will they offer Bungie.net to PSN accounts? I look forward to finding out.
Meanwhile, Reach is just over 90 days away.