Most Bungiefen have been eagerly awaiting official news for the company's next game, referred to internally as Tiger and externally as Destiny, have so far been treated only to long-winded legal contracts and some leaked treatments and concept art. Bungie has started up their Community Theatre series of short videos on YouTube featuring Deej and Raspy (a stuffed tiger, get it?) and promising a reveal of the company's new game within a few weeks.

Now, however, Eurogamer is reporting that the transcript of Activision's yearly "money meeting" posted at investment site Seeking Alpha casts doubt on what the leaked contract revealed-- which was a target for the franchise's first release in Fall 2013.

"It will also be a year of significant continued investment in several new properties with long-term potential that are not factored into our 2013 financial outlook, including Activision Publishing's new Bungie universe, Call of Duty Online for China and the new Blizzard MMO."

--Activision's chief financial officer Dennis Durkin

Eurogamer speculates that had Destiny still been on the release slate for 2013, it would certainly have been mentioned.

This is what Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg did have to say about Destiny:

"Development also continues on our new ground-breaking project with Bungie. Bungie defined the action-shooter category with Halo, and we feel this project will once again deliver genre-defining innovation.

"While we don't have a launch date to announce today, we expect to deliver incredible games with unprecedented marketing support for new IP. We look forward to sharing more information on this title in the near future."

So there it is. Activision is not talking publicly about making money on Bungie this year-- only spending it.

Some more specifics:

And also, as I mentioned, our outlook does not include the release of the Bungie game or Call of Duty Online in China, although, we still incur costs throughout the year on these projects. In total, we expect the year-over-year impact of all these items will be more than $0.10.

Of course it's always better to beat estimates than meet them; so what Activision is saying here is that they aren't expecting to make money on Destiny this year, but they will be spending it. It's worth noting here that they are excepting the launch of the CoD franchise in China from the revenue projections as well, even though Kotaku reported last month that CoD was in Alpha testing in China and I really think it doesn't take a whole year to alpha test a version of a game you've already made for a new market.

Of course, those optimistic for a release this year-- some even hoping for an announcement this month, ahead of next months' GDC-- may wish to interpret this as a respect for Bungie's silence, not wishing to steal the company's thunder, confident that a few weeks lag between their money meeting and a release schedule won't harm them with investors too much, especially where earning less money than expected is punished even when you've made a lot, and making more than is expected is punished never.

Perhaps even the knowledge that this transcript was going to be made widely available kept Activision from talking too much about Bungie. Call of Duty is referred to in the transcript 27 times; Bungie 10 times, World of Warcraft 8 times, and StarCraft 6 times. The word "Destiny" appears... nowhere. Perhaps Activision just felt that nothing not already made public should be revealed.

Or maybe Bungie's Destiny doesn't come until next year. Don't call it a delay, though-- you can't delay something you've never announced, even if everyone knows what it is, what it's called, and what platforms you're making it for.

Not that it would surprise anyone, but an ex-Bungie employee recently posted in their online resume (not saying who or linking, sorry) that they worked on Bungie's as-yet unnanounced Next Project, and that it used a "modified version" of the Halo engine.

Given that even Halo itself could be said, broadly, to have been prototyped in a "modified Myth engine" and that every Halo game used a modified version of the engine of the game before it, there's nothing Earth-shattering about this, but... for what it's worth, it would appear that Bungie's next game at least has some connection to the work the company has done on Halo in the past decade, and isn't a complete technological departure.

Bungie restarted the delayed countdown from this year's E3 with the Superintendent urging everyone to stay calm and keep clean-- at least until about seven minutes from now. Images on the intertubes (thanks Veegie) suggest perhaps something as dramatic as a trailer for a brand-new Bungie game.

Looks like the Superintendent is back. Perhaps one (or more) of the Bungie announcements that were indefinitely postponed at this year's E3 are about to be made public.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun thinks that a Halo MMO might be coming. Writer Jim Rossignol comes up with a laundry list of reasons why, some of which I don't find entirely convincing.

I'd probably play it if they made it, though. I originally thought Halo-- the first game-- would be something like PlanetSide. It'd be nice to finally see a game like that in a universe as compelling as Halo's.

The rumor mill is working overtime as this year's scaled-down E3 approaches.

The latest comes from "sources" who are reporting to GameSpot's Rumor Control column that Bungie will announce a new, "grittier" Halo universe game: a squad-based shooter that follows a group of ODSTs and doesn't feature the series' iconic Spartan warrior, the Master Chief.

GameSpot's rumor control columnist is calling this rumor "certainly not bogus". Let's wait and find out.

There are ways in which this is certainly a safe path for Microsoft to take with the property. They are staying mostly within the same genre that Halo fans are familiar with. They'd be giving the Cortana/Master Chief pairing a must-deserved rest, perhaps avoiding both story inconsistencies and franchise fatigue. They'd also be expanding on part of the Haloverse that many fans would like to see more of.

Make it an online shooter with a persistent world, like PlanetSide, and you'd likely have me hooked.

...or is Sarcastic Gamer just happy to see you? More of you than they can handle, apparently, since the site is no longer accessible, leading me to depend on a report from Kotaku that the site, along with CVG, is citing the usual "sources" that a new Halo game will be announced at E3. Halo Chronicles? Halo 4? Lego Halo? Nothing at all? Time will tell.

UPDATE: This one continues to make the rounds: ActionTrip, Fragland, Xbox360FanBoy, and NeoGAF. The last seems to focus more on the "Superintendent" image and a possible non-Halo title.

UPDATE: I couldn't open SarcasticGamer when I posted this item, but it is visible now, and the editor assures us below that the site has been running the entire time. Specifically, the site claims Halo 4 will be announced at E3, and they've added a link to the story at CVG as corroboration of their original claim.

Apparently some readers disbelieve the rumor because it's "too early" for the announcement of another Halo game. SG replies that there's a difference between announcing game development and announcing a release date-- but in this case it really may be too early, as Halo 3 wasn't announced until 18 months after the release of Halo 2, and the release of Halo 3 was only nine months ago. Unless this game is really a content release for the Halo 3 engine, or Bungie has magically figured out a way to halve its development time for Halo games (three years per game, give or take) it means that the wait for Halo 4 will seem even longer.

Kotaku reader frostcircus sent in an excerpt from what purports to be a marketing survey regarding possible future Halo titles. It's unclear to me whether this is something a marketing company prepared at Microsoft's request, or something they did independently to gather market intelligence, or what.

If the former, it may mean Microsoft is seriously gauging the potential of further expansion of the Halo universe after Halo Wars and Halo Chronicles. If the latter, it may mean nothing.

Can Lego Halo, an April Fool's joke this year from 1Up, be that far removed from at least potential reality?