The saga of Bungie v. Microsoft in The Case of the Missing Haloes continues. The L.A. Times spoke with Xbox senior VP Don Mattrick regarding the omission of Bungie's announcement from its Monday press conference. Mattrick told the writers that Microsoft decided to nix the reveal during the show to "save time."Let that sink in for a moment, you 5+ million Halo fans. Time. Word around the campfire is Microsoft's conference was originally set to run for two-and-a-half hours, but Mattrick wanted to cut the show down to 90 minutes. Of the items to be cut from the show? Anything named Halo. Mattrick told the paper that Microsoft's conference already contained, "an embarrassment of riches," so the Halo trump cards were removed from the docket.
At least we still got to see that sweet Lips presentation though. Now that's a franchise!
Surely it had nothing to do with the fear of taking attention away from Final Fantasy XIII for 360. Balderdash! Or, Gears of War 2. Poppycock!
Now the question remains, when will we see the new
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
7-17-2008 @ 11:30AM
Scott said...
MS canceled the X07 event last year and I can't find anything about an X08 event for this year.
That leaves the following upcoming conferences:
Leipzig
PAX
E4All
Tokyo Game Show
7-17-2008 @ 1:19PM
Ejab said...
They will announce it soon, Ms hasnt gone more than 2 years without an x0 conference.
7-17-2008 @ 11:18AM
horngreen said...
They're going to build this up too much and it will be some lame ass XBLA game that will come and go like that other Bungie XBLA game Marathon Whatnot? Now if it is Halo 1 online I'm all over it. Other than that I can't imagine what it will be.
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7-17-2008 @ 11:27AM
Eric Oltersdorf said...
I thought Whingnut's comment about Square Enix was interesting. I hadn't considered that angle. I studied Japanese in college and they are all about saving face and not being embarrassed. The Xbox's numbers in Japan are minuscule compared to other platforms and Square Enix is taking a risk to port their game over. That they would is a huge victory for Microsoft and a potential lever to crack the Japanese market. If I was Microsoft I'd make FFXIII the centerpiece of my press conference as well.
BUT
To let Bungie start building up to a big reveal and then yank the plug at the last minute indicates,to me, miscommunication on a massive scale between Bungie and Microsoft. These types of contingencies are talked about beforehand not decided unilaterally right before.
Bottom line, for all their boasting of being an newly independent company Bungie just got very publicly teabagged by Microsoft and that sucks.
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7-17-2008 @ 12:52PM
joey said...
I'll bet it's Halo Uno for the casual market.
and a Halo anime turn based strategy game for the Japanese market.
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7-17-2008 @ 1:08PM
Andrew said...
As someone who works in PR, here's my take on the whole thing....
This year's press conference was all about Microsoft convincing the press that they're moving forward and expanding, and that Sony and Nintendo don't have anything on them.
You think you need a PS3 to get a home entertainment media system with hi def options? Check out netflix and my new content partnership with NBC/Uni.
You think you need a wii for a family friendly system with casual games? Look at my avatars, my new friendly looking interface, and check out these new casual games too.
You think you need a PS3 to play Sony flagship exclusives? Well check this out....
Again, the message out of this press conference was that Microsoft moving forward and expanding. A new Halo game would have been viewed as more of the same and would have contradicted this carefully crafted message.
So I think they were right to exclude Bungie/Halo from the presser, but they f'd up their internal relations with Bungie and turned their exclusion into a public snub. Now they risk having the bungie story overshadow, or at least take some attention away from their major announcements.
Additionally, and I'm not sure about this, with Bungie being independent now they could choose to snub Microsoft right back by working with another console for one of their new IPs.
Just my thoughts....
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7-17-2008 @ 1:45PM
Ejab said...
They cant "Snub" MS they have a exclusivity contract for the rest of this gen.
7-17-2008 @ 1:46PM
Andrew said...
my bad. That's the part I wasn't sure of.
7-17-2008 @ 2:29PM
Etchasketchist said...
Here's the disaster part:
They should've come up with this carefully crafted message weeks ago and told Bungie to put a kibosh on the whole website teaser thing. That's the fuck-up.
7-17-2008 @ 5:10PM
Arnon said...
I honestly think they pulled it due to the fact they already knew they were going to make the crowd explode with new stuff..
Adding Halo probably would've set off a nulcear war of some sort. O_o
7-17-2008 @ 1:50PM
Etchasketchist said...
So somebody was looking at all the games they could announce in the time they had and was like, "Hmm. You're In the Movies, or Halo? You're In The Movies, or Halo?" and they decide, "yup, sorry Halo, we're going with You're In the Movies!".
That person should be fired. And we should get a picture of that person so we can make derisive photoshop jobbies.
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7-17-2008 @ 2:59PM
Dwag said...
I'm hoping its a Halo gamer's day event with Chronicles,Wars and this new Halo all being shown.
I hope Bungie's Halo has up to 32 players.
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7-17-2008 @ 5:17PM
ZombiesRPplsToo said...
im so glad i got to see lips instead of a new Halo game
wtf microsoft
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7-17-2008 @ 6:05PM
Jonah Falcon said...
WELCOME TO CORPORATE AMERICA.
This happens *all* *the* *time* in business. All the time.
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7-18-2008 @ 6:39AM
GuiltyDragon said...
My money is on PAX. Bungie and PA have worked together on stuff before. Remember when Halo 3 was the final challange on the Omeganaughts before the game was released?
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7-19-2008 @ 1:46AM
Yug Drater said...
Bungie has saved Microsoft's ass sooo many times in the console wars. I myself decided to buy an Xbox over a PS2 simply because I played the original Halo for 5 minutes at a Toys-R-Us. Halo 2 got people interested in Xbox Live...until Halo 2 there was jack and shit to play on Xbox Live, and only now are other developers catching on to the simple yet often underused party system, matchmaking, etc. that Bungie implemented. And with Halo 3 Microsoft was able to get people to buy 360s, sign up for gold Live memberships...and what thanks does Bungie get? "Thanks, BUT we'd rather talk about a bunch of fucking dumb ass avatars that we ripped off from Nintendo, and a god damn karaoke game that no one gives a shit about." Seriously, if I want to sing a fucking song in a game, I'll do it during Rock Band. You know what they say, hot dogs are made out of two things "LIPS and assholes."
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