We finally know what Bungie is up to!

I wish more publishers and developers would have legal feuds, because as a result of Activision and Infinity Ward’s legal kerfuffle, new information regarding Bungie’s future has been brought to light. In case you don’t feel like reading this 27-page document over at the Los Angeles Times, the gist is as follows: Activision will be financing and publishing a tetracycle of new games developed by Bungie. It should not come as a shock that the series (tentatively named ‘Destiny’) will be “sci-fantasy, action-shooter games”, considering Bungie’s previous hit was a whole series of “sci-fantasy, action-shooter games”. Unlike their previous series, however, Bungie owns this IP. So if they want to make a ‘Destiny’ 5 with another publisher, that is a possibility.

The most interesting thing out of this document is the fact that ‘Destiny’ 2, 3, and 4 will all be developed for next-generation consoles. ‘Destiny’ 1 will be an Xbox 360-exclusive, but after that, the games will end up on whatever Microsoft and Sony will be putting out for the next generation of consoles.

Normally, I wouldn’t report on this for reasons other than my assumption that you guys care about Bungie, but I actually stumbled across something fairly important. The document mentions “major downloadable content expansion pack-type software releases developed by Licensor for each Destiny Game (collectively, ‘Comets’)”. After reading this, most gamers will probably decide to wait for a ‘complete’ or ‘GOTY’ edition (and rightly so, considering the prevalence of that crap in modern publishing). But I’d advise otherwise. Look at all the Call of Duty map packs, for example. Did that series ever get any sort of complete edition? Nope, Activision just doesn’t do that kind of thing. Plus, we have a new wrinkle to consider. Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb is usually right on the money, so I’m choosing to trust him when he says “If Destiny is a persistent online world as rumored, yearly expansions between major retail releases would make sense.” Sounds a little bit like a console MMO to me, and MMOs don’t usually get GOTY editions.

There’s also details about a new game in the Marathon series as well as the potential rating for the ‘Destiny’ tetraology (T, by the way), all of which you can find here. But I guess the important thing is that Bungie is back in the developing game. Can’t wait to see what they’ve got for us.