That’s a harsh change from “Microsoft forced them into an uncreative situation so they left” when they had complete freedom under Activision and basically just made even more Halo, without the charm. And then broke themselves away from another large publisher for the second time in a decade with the same “meddling” excuse.
Bungie is badly managed.
Jason Jones is a terrible leader. Made worse by greed.
Pretty much the case since Halo 2…you could say pre-Halo CE since they were effectively saved from bankruptcy by selling to Microsoft.
Destiny the game wasn’t done on time.
How many of them were shareholders? Missing milestones by a year is a costly issue for an independent company, especially with Activision (remember X-Men and Silicon Knights?)
They screwed over the one guy they felt they didn’t need because he’d already written the music for all the games. Took it to court about wrongful termination and won I believe.
Halo 4 had one of the fastest population drop offs of any of the games where it tanked down to <30% of it’s launch day population in mere months, and I know because I was involved with Halo 4 matchmaking.
It’s also the best selling Halo and probably the best looking 360 game, but lets ignore that. Only a million+ people were playing it regularly…and Halo 5 has something like the best retention of any game since 3…so I guess we’re back to normal then. Only at 60fps.
343 absolutely emptied the goodwill cupboard with Halo 4, and they’ve slowly been rebuilding it since with MCC and H5
And what did Destiny do?
“Leave us alone and let us make something great”
Yeah, Destiny 1 was awful. Destiny 2 was an improvement, but still only passable and now the IP has apparently been shelved with no further releases planned while Bungie moves onto something else.
but man, I’m not sure anyone would try to say that Bungie’s only good output was Halo with a straight face.
It’s safe to say Halo was their peak. Maybe that will change. I think 10 years is long enough to cast a verdict.