Bungie President Harold Ryan denied claims by Microsoft's Don Mattrick that he laughed and acquiesced with the publisher's decision to indefinitely postpone Bungie's E3 announcement.
I thought this story would fizzle out. If certain people had much any sense, it probably would have. Yet here we are.
Eurogamer has an exclusive interview coming up tomorrow with Microsoft's Xbox 360 boss Don Mattrick. They, of course, asked him about the cancelled Bungie announcement and the studio's reaction:
Well, it's been awhile since COD4 and Halo 3 did the flip-flop on Major Nelson's ranking of top games on Xbox Live, but it's happened again: Halo 3 is number one, and COD4 is number two. Again.
After transcribing "Unforgotten" into a full score, I decided to do it again for the updated version, "Never Forget". I did it to the best of my ability, had to guess on some things, but I played it side by side with the Halo 3 CD and it sounded pretty darn close, if not exact, to me. So I think I got it right. Also, at measure 25, I couldn't quite pin down which key Marty switches to so I just left it in G Maj/E min. until measure 51 when he obviously goes back to the original key of "Unforgotten" (which is A flat Maj/F min).
This is a transcription done by myself concerning Unforgotten from Halo 2. There are 3 horns, full string orchestra, and a piano. I do not have a MIDI or MP3 of this file as of yet. Shouldn't need one anyway. Just listen to the Halo 2 CD. Anyway, hope you like this one.
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.
So a couple days ago I wrote a bit on how Bungie got the rug pulled out from under them at E3.
As near as the Intertubes can piece it together, a few days before E3, Microsoft let Bungie know they wouldn't be included in the press conference. Bungie then enacted contingency plans for their own announcement, which is what precipitated the countdown on Bungie.net.
On Tuesday Microsoft told Bungie they wouldn't be allowed to do that, either, and since Microsoft is Bungie's publisher for Halo games, and Microsoft owns the Halo intellectual property, and the announcement concerned Halo, Bungie had to do what Microsoft says, prompting Bungie president Harold Ryan's apology to the fans, which can also be interpreted as a nice polite way of flipping the bird to the publisher.
Ah, the heady days of the early and mid 90s, when Bungie was an independent developer and publisher, master of its own destiny. They developed what they wanted to develop, announced when they wanted to announced, and shipped... well, when the boxes were done.
Those days must seem so simple compared to now.
Because what's going on now is apparently a Bungie announcement scheduled for E3 today-- one likely related to Halo in some way-- has been postponed indefinitely by Bungie's publisher.
That would be Microsoft, for those of you keeping score at home, even though the name "Microsoft" does not appear anywhere in the carefully-worded missive from Bungie president Harold Ryan.
Most fans, of course, don't care what happened or who is at fault. They just knew they were supposed to be seeing something exciting and new within the next twelve hours, and now they won't. For a form of popular entertainment whose fans vacillate back and forth between endurance trials of development waits-- three years for each of the last three Halo games-- and the instant gratification of online multiplayer matches where average lifetimes can be well under thirty seconds, such an indefinite delay is a great disappointment. Even if we don't know what it was we were supposed to be expecting.
So what were we expecting, when can we expect it, and why was it delayed just twelve hours before it was to hit?
Just moments ago the countdown on Bungie.net, which had about 12 hours left to go until some cryptic announcement, changed to an apology from studio president Harold Ryan that reads:
For the last several months, we've been building towards a reveal of something exciting that Bungie's working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher.
With the Iron skull on, you should avoid letting marines drive at all costs. However, even then you can still end up having a highway mishap. In this case, a close call with a banshee bolt propelled me too close to the edge to recover. As this was just before the Scarab was due to appear, it meant going back to restart the level after getting more than two thirds of the way through.
A multitude of distant Covenant cruisers, as well as a closer group of Banshees and Phantoms, patrol the area around the portal device where Truth has parked his Forerunner Dreadnought.
A Grunt checks his instrument panel as the Chief prepares to plant a plasma sticky on the front of his ride. This was during an Iron skull run, and rather than try to board the Ghost, or use a plasma pistol to disable the vehicle then kill the pilot, I went for the safer-- and more satisfyingly destructive-- approach.
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.