(Note: I'm counting this as Monday's entry.)
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A friend brought this to my attention so I thought I'd report on it.
This is big news, because Bungie not only owns the famous "Halo" franchise, but is in general esteemed through the industry.
Here's the first article I found. It states that Bungie will maintain the rights to its intellectual property, and Activision Blizzard will PUBLISH it. To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure what a video game publisher DID exactly. I was pretty sure they were like a book publisher, both manufacturing and marketing the material. I turned out to be mostly right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher
Anyway, a more detailed article on the sale can be found here.
So what does this collaboration mean? ATVI has a pretty far reach and a strong hold on online markets, so I'm guessing it plans to distribute Bungie's games to a far wider audience. To speculate even further, perhaps it plans to harness Bungie talent in its mysterious upcoming new MMORPG. That could be pretty awesome if executed right.
Critics of this deal are concerned that Activision Blizzard will eventually try to take over Bungie, and this deal is just the foothold. They also point towards the "infinity ward situation", a mess of lawsuits resulting from ATVI firing two heads of one of its subsidiaries, Infinity Ward, before they received any royalties.
Anyhow, I'm hoping for the best.
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