Bungie Jumps

Bungie Studios, the game development studio behind the lucrative Halo series of games for the Xbox, is regaining its independence after seven years as a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. The change will have little effect on Microsoft’s Xbox business: Microsoft will retain all intellectual property rights for the Halo series. Bungie will continue to use Microsoft as its publisher and will build games primarily for the Xbox 360. Microsoft is also retaining an undisclosed equity stake in Bungie.

Studio Produced Record-Breakers

Bungie was founded in 1991 and had a successful series of games for the PC and Macintosh platforms, including Marathon and Myth. In 1999, the company began to demonstrate Halo, a first-person shooting game it was planning to release for PC and Mac, and excitement quickly built around the game. In June 2000, three months after announcing the first Xbox, Microsoft acquired the privately held company for an undisclosed sum (rumored to be approximately US$50 million) and folded Bungie into a new game development and publishing unit, Microsoft Game Studios.