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Comment by acomjean | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft bought Bungie in 2000. -(Halo was going to be for mac, and demoed by Steve Jobs who I guess made it look so great Bungie sold.)

released a bunch of very successful games as xbox exclusives.

7 years later Bungie left microsoft as its own company again. (not sure how that happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie

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> 7 years later Bungie left microsoft as its own company again. (not sure how that happened.

My guess is Microsoft got to keep what it really wanted, the Halo brand.

Practically sold the xbox by itself.

By 2007 Bungie had been fully absorbed into Microsoft. Microsoft retained the rights to Halo and held a minority stake in the "new" Bungie, LLC. I assume by 2007 any vesting periods were over and MS came to a mutual agreement with the Bungie shareholders to allow them to spin off.

Also note they Microsoft mismanaged the Halo property royally. The most recent failure the delay of Halo Infinite, that allegedly has been in development for over 4 years and will miss the launch of the new Xbox console due to poor quality. Microsoft also run Rare almost into irrelevancy after the acquisition. Not the greatest track record there.

Honestly Halo started to go off the rails at Halo 2 and that silly cliffhanger ending. And I'm still not sure I understand the plot of Halo 3.

So I don't know if you can pin the blame for what happened to the Halo franchise on MSFT.

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