Microsoft, Bungie Explain Halo’s No Show

July 17, 2008 By Nick Mokey

Microsoft admits to nixing the planned announcement of a new Halo game to save time in their E3 press conference.

Rumors swirled this week about an upcoming Halo game to be announced at Microsoft’s E3 press conference, but when the moment came, Microsoft and Halo developer Bungie kept mum. In the wake of disappointment, Halo and Microsoft have both confirmed that another Halo game is on the way, and explained why it didn’t show up at this year’s E3.

Bungie president Harold Ryan first posted a message on the company’s official Web site. “For the last several months, we’ve been building toward a reveal of something exciting that Bungie is working on,” he wrote. “We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were changed by our publisher.”

That publisher – Microsoft – offered its own explanation on Thursday. According to the LA Times, the company pulled Bungie’s presentation to trim down the length of Microsoft’s entire event. “We had an embarrassment of riches,” senior vice president of Microsoft’s Xbox games business, Don Mattrick said. “We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event.”

So while Halo fans are out in the cold for now, they can at least rest assured that the promise of a new game lingers just over the horizon.

Showing 4 comments

Tim Stevens at 9:11am 21st July 2008 Read between the lines. They aren't ready yet. They don't have something they could show. There may be disagreements between the two companies, etc.
Gimp Samurai at 1:14am 18th July 2008 give me a break, if your gonna announce a game in a series that has sold so well (halo), and failed so hard (halo 2's story & 3's multiplayer), you dont want to keep people in the dark. Microsoft, we understnad that your experts on selling things, but REALLY, we just want to hear about the next exciting addition to an already awsome trilogy.
Rhys at 11:24pm 17th July 2008 Yeah no ****, Bungie has wanted out of Microsoft for a while now.
Larry at 5:41pm 17th July 2008 Lame, and you know MS is totally lying. The two companies are not getting a long and Bungie wants out. Obviously MS is trying some tricks...