Even more out of left-field than HP buying Palm, Activision and Bungie come out of nowhere and announce that the two companies have just agreed to a multiple-year, worldwide exclusive agreement. Before you jump the gun, though, that doesn’t mean that Halo Reach will be coming to more consoles than Microsoft’s Xbox 360, but itdoes mean that their future titles will be doing just that.
In an official announcement today, Activision and Bungie have come clean on a 10-year, exclusive agreement to work together as publisher and developer, respectively. Bungie, as you’re probably well aware, is the house that created the mega-hit Halo, along with a few other titles like Marathon and Myth, have notoriously been Microsoft bedfellows. For all intents and purposes, many consider Halo to be the game that truly built up Microsoft’s home console. As for Activision, they’re famous for several published titles, but most notably the Call of Duty franchise. The whole deal is designed to significantly increase Bungie’s exposure to the console war, which up until now, has been segregated to the Xbox 360.
The agreement means that Activision has the sole, exclusive, worldwide rights to publish and distribute Bungie’s next titles, as many as they can release in the 10-year mark. Which is a good move on both the company’s parts, as this means that it’s not an exclusive right to a particular series, but means that Bungie will be able to get their titles to all of the major consoles, no matter what the game is. There’s no word on what title is coming next from Bungie, but we can imagine that it’s going to be a First Person Shooter (FPS).