Item — HN Reader

Almost nothing you've got here is accurate.

- Halo was announced in 1999, originally planned as an RTS for Windows + Mac, not for the launch of Mac gaming (not Mac only, although prior titles were focused on Mac only)

- MS purchased Bungie in 2000

- While Halo was a flagship, it was also released on Windows + Mac in the end (two years late), no IP sniping

- 2007 Bungie splits from MS to a private company (leaving the Halo franchise behind), not 2010

- 2010-2019 Bungie partners with Activision, they coop to make Destiny - there was no acquisition

- 3 years ago (2019) Bungie ends the partnership, keeps Destiny franchise

- There's no way MS considered a company that had a former relationship with an acquisition might be thrown in

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(franchise) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie

2 comments

> originally planned as an RTS for Windows + Mac, not for the launch of Mac gaming

How I read the OP (at least for this bullet) is in line with what I remember at the time: Halo was originally a Mac exclusive, and us Mac gamers (there were dozens of us, dozens!) generally perceived it as being the beginning of a golden era, where Mac would be taken as seriously as PC for games. I was absolutely heartbroken when it moved to XBox exclusive. I still ended up buying one for Halo anyway, just like everyone else.

EDIT: that being said, I was a kid at the time, and reading up on things, it was announced by Jobs during MacWorld that it was going to be Mac + Windows, so I don't know if my memory of the situation is about rumors before launch, if I misunderstood things because I was 13 at the time, or if I simply have mis-remembered because that was over 20 years ago, hah.

>>> - ~2001, Bungie develops Halo as a title for the launch of Mac gaming.

>> - Halo was announced in 1999, originally planned as an RTS for Windows + Mac, not for the launch of Mac gaming (not Mac only, although prior titles were focused on Mac only)

> How I read the OP (at least for this bullet) is in line with what I remember at the time: Halo was originally a Mac exclusive, and us Mac gamers (there were dozens of us, dozens!) generally perceived it as being the beginning of a golden era, where Mac would be taken as seriously as PC for games.

That's how I remember perceiving it: finally a Mac game that the PC gaming kids would be jealous of. Also, I think it had already evolved into a FPS before MS bought it (I remember thinking the vehicles would be really novel and compelling feature compared to PC FPSes).

Gaming with a Mac was a backwater in the 90s. All the popular games would get a belated Mac port, if that (e.g. by the time PC gamers moved on to Command and Conquer: Red Alert, I just was able to play the original Command and Conquer, and Red Alert was never ported at all). Bungie's games were Mac-only and good, but (for instance) by the time I played the Marathon series, the tech was dated.

Edit: corrected mistake, I was thinking about Command and Conquer/Red Alert, not Starcraft/Brood war.

I think you are misremembering the Brood War release. It was available for Mac 6 months after the PC release, and the “battle chest”,which contained both StarCraft and brood war, was mac/windows hybrid. The battle chest was by far the biggest seller, too.

> I think you are misremembering the Brood War release. It was available for Mac 6 months after the PC release, and the “battle chest”,which contained both StarCraft and brood war, was mac/windows hybrid. The battle chest was by far the biggest seller, too.

Yeah, I think you're right. I was actually thinking about Command and Conquer: Red Alert. According to this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Command_%26_Conquer_me...), the original was released for PC in 1995. Red Alert and the the Mac port of the original were released in 1996. Red Alert was never ported.

You'd certainly be forgiven for thinking it was a Mac exclusive. You wouldn't think Steve Jobs would personally introduce a game that was multi-platform:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eZ2yvWl9nQ

One of the worst things about the internet, is almost nothing is impressive anymore. It's hard to describe now how outstanding that video was when it came out. And how rare it was to have an experience like that. To see something so many std devs better than the norm than anything else you had previously seen.

Now, so much (of everything) comes out so often, in every shape and size . And so many things are extreme for extreme sake, that it's hard to have that same wonder or amazement like seeing this for the first time.

Everything is now common place. Even revolutionary experiences are so common place they no longer really register anymore.

especially given how much of a Steve Jobs fanboy I was back in those days...

sure, in case it wasn't clear "~" is my shorthand for "approximate". I was going off vague memory and broad strokes. Not sure 2007 vs 2010 makes a big difference in terms of timeline, but I appreciate you filling in the details!

> - 2010-2019 Bungie partners with Activision, they coop to make Destiny - there was no acquisition

I said "teamed up", not acquired..?

Another commenter pointed out that Bungie left Acti.. true, I wasn't aware of that.

> There's no way MS considered a company that had a former relationship with an acquisition might be thrown in

Often acquisitions are also about "buying the network", not just the IP.

I do that too, I use ~ as an 'ish' so I tend to append rather than prepend. Just thought that was funny :)