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Apple History: Jobs 'Raged' Over Microsoft's 2000 Acquisition of 'Halo' Developer Bungie

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Develop offers an interesting teaser from its forthcoming interview with former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft Ed Fries, who notes that he was personally tasked with appeasing Apple CEO Steve Jobs after Microsoft acquired game developer Bungie Studios in 2000. Bungie had been a prominent game developer for the Mac platform, but Microsoft's acquisition enabled it to scoop up Bungie's Halo project and turn it into an Xbox exclusive.
"As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called," Fries said.

"He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we'd just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer."
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Fries goes on to note that Microsoft and Apple reached a deal that saw Microsoft help port a handful of PC games to the Mac platform. As part of the deal, Fries appeared on-stage with Jobs at Macworld New York in 2000 in order to reassure Mac users about the partnership between Microsoft/Bungie and Apple.
"Anyway, we did this deal with Apple where we'd port some PC games to the Macintosh and help Peter Tamte create this company to do it, and I had to go to a Mac developer conference and get on stage and talk about this whole new partnership. It was a pretty strange time."
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Despite the promises of continued cooperation, Halo for Mac was ultimately delayed until December 2003. Fries left Microsoft in 2004, and Microsoft spun off Bungie in 2007 with Microsoft retaining the rights to the Halo franchise, although the two companies have continued to collaborate on Halo projects.

Article Link: Apple History: Jobs 'Raged' Over Microsoft's 2000 Acquisition of 'Halo' Developer Bungie
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/26/apple-history-jobs-raged-over-microsofts-2000-acquisition-of-halo-developer-bungie/
Interesting. And very surprising; Steve Jobs doesn't care about games and has done nothing to encourage them on the Mac. He had no right to rage.
 
Bungie would still be an unknown had it not made the switch to Microsoft. Apple and Jobs don't really know much about games.
 
I'm certainly not surprised by this, as Steve felt the same way a lot of Bungie fans of the era did.

Of course, the real tragedy is that after the MS buyout Bungie went from being a clever, innovative, great game studio to being a Halo factory.

I didn't bother reading much about Bungie after the buyout, because I immediately stopped caring--no way will I ever support MS's leveraging their OS monopoly gains to hammer their way into the gaming market by buying a game product from them--but I can only assume all the good people eventually left the company. It would explain why they did essentially nothing creative after Halo 1.
 
Myth was a cool game back in the day. the bungie devs were geniuses with the terrain they created in the 1990's that ran on P2 and P3 CPU's. these days similar features require an nvidia card that gets so hot it can heat your house
 
Interesting.

Not much of a gamer...I like Pacman and original Mario Brothers...:)
I played Halo1 with 3 friends and was hooked.

Bungie outdid themselves with the Halo (1) concept and execution of gameplay.

PS: I played Call of Duty a week ago for the first time and its a winner as well...might even make me get a gaming system :)
 
Makosuke said:
I'm certainly not surprised by this, as Steve felt the same way a lot of Bungie fans of the era did.

Of course, the real tragedy is that after the MS buyout Bungie went from being a clever, innovative, great game studio to being a Halo factory.

I didn't bother reading much about Bungie after the buyout, because I immediately stopped caring--no way will I ever support MS's leveraging their OS monopoly gains to hammer their way into the gaming market by buying a game product from them--but I can only assume all the good people eventually left the company. It would explain why they did essentially nothing creative after Halo 1.
Click to expand...

Really, when you think about it, the Xbox and Xbox360 are the most successful things MS has done outside of Windows & Office. Most of MS's other attempts at consumer products (notably Zune and WinMo Phones) have tanked.

I'm as "eh..." on MS as the next guy, but the 360 really is a fantastic gaming console.
 
Apple's Fault

Apple failed the nurture Bungie, and to put enough emphasis on mac gaming.

Microsoft was entering the console arena and had a huge DirectX developer community.
 
Did the article say that Microsoft was working on Mac ports of this game, or Bungie?

Because as far as I know, Halo for mac was developed under Macsoft
 
Number 41 said:
Really, when you think about it, the Xbox and Xbox360 are the most successful things MS has done outside of Windows & Office. Most of MS's other attempts at consumer products (notably Zune and WinMo Phones) have tanked.

I'm as "eh..." on MS as the next guy, but the 360 really is a fantastic gaming console.
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But I don't believe they have made any money off of XBox 360 yet.
 
That is Microsoft's strategy: buy the competition or buy developers of the competition's platform.

They tried getting iOS developers to develop apps for their mobile OS.
 
I was part of the Bungie community starting with Myth TFL, and played through the Marathon series. The Macworld demo of Halo was epic at the time. A real game changer. Few (no?) games had ever demoed a smooth and beautiful transition from indoor to outdoor play. Small indoor areas are a great way to limit the number of vertices on screen that a computer has to dear with :)

And it was a very sad, almost unbelievable day when Bungie "sold out" to Microsoft.

The truth, which can be found in more details other places, is that Bungie was going under. The Development Cycle of games means that you may or may not have enough cash to carry yourself to the end of the next game. Bungie was in trouble, and may never have been able to carry themselves as a company to the release of Halo.

That said, Bungie wasn't looking to sell. Microsoft just made too good an offer, at just the right time. In more than a few ways. A number of the "Young guys" that started Bungie were entering into parenthood. They were no longer young guys with nothing to lose. So with the Apple/Microsoft OSX/Windows wars aside, I'm happy to see that Bungie is still alive as a company, and producing great games. Even if the haters love to pick on them for being successful ;-)
 
bommai said:
But I don't believe they have made any money off of XBox 360 yet.
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They've probably lost net-cash on the console during it's lifespan, but they've cleaned up on XBox LIVE revenue (from both subscriptions and DLC). The 360 is really just a giant loss-leader to get gamers spending $60 per year online.

Plus, that's not even considering the money they make on first-party titles.
 
im glad it is on the xbox. i love playing it. anyway bungie just released their last halo game "halo reach" and the halo project will continue through 343 industries.


man do i love it when one of the two forms i go to talk about the other form i go to.
 
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