Ah, what could have been…

Develop offers an interesting teaser from its forthcoming interview with former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft Ed Fries, who notes that he was personally tasked with appeasing Apple CEO Steve Jobs after Microsoft acquired game developer Bungie Studios in 2000. Bungie had been a prominent game developer for the Mac platform, but Microsofts acquisition enabled it to scoop up Bungies Halo project and turn it into an Xbox exclusive.

“As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called,” Fries said.”He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because wed just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer.”

Fries goes on to note that Microsoft and Apple reached a deal that saw Microsoft help port a handful of PC games to the Mac platform. As part of the deal, Fries appeared on-stage with Jobs at Macworld New York in 2000 in order to reassure Mac users about the partnership between Microsoft/Bungie and Apple.

via Apple History: Jobs Raged Over Microsofts 2000 Acquisition of Halo Developer Bungie – Mac Rumors.Mac Rumors

I was a Halo junkie long before Xbox.

I sometimes feel like a member of some secret society when people talk about Halo without realizing that Halo, as it is known today, is nothing like Bungie’s original vision for the game. Yes, Halo would have been released for Windows, but it was also going to be released for Mac. Bungie and Blizzard were the only two major game studios I can think of who released for both platforms. Of even greater importance was the concept behind Halo. It wasn’t being crafted as some simple first person shooter, but as a second generation fusion of MMO and FPS. Just imagine an MMO Halo.

Here is the original introduction of Halo made at MacWorld in 1999.

I never believed that Halo’s succes was due to the Xbox platform, but rather the story and the Master Chief.
These elements would have been even more powerful in an MMO format.

Enter: The 800 lb Gorilla

Steve Jobs wasn’t the only one really angry and disappointed  when Bungie sold out to Microsoft.

The entire gaming landscape could be vastly different today had Apple bought Bungie – or if Microsoft simply had not. Mac gaming would have been hugely elevated a full decade ahead of the resurgence we’re now seeing in the Mac OS (all thanks to the iPod and iTunes) and the market Xbox sailed into would have had some choppy waters.

Have you heard of World of Warcraft? Of course you have. Odds are pretty good you might be one of the now twelve million account holders. World of Warcraft immediately dwarfed the subscriber base of every MMO before it. In fact, it now has more active accounts than most other MMOs combined. It changed the face of MMOs.

That could have been Halo.

I played Sony Online Entertainment’s ‘Planetside‘, a FPS MMO that was what Halo was meant to be and I often thought of that for the year+ I played that game before SOE ruined it as they have most games they publish – but that’s another story.

UPDATE: According to this report, Apple was aware that Bungie was looking to sell, but was only interested when it became obvious that Microsoft was interested in the acquisition.

Bungie looked like it was on top of the world in 1999, having just shown Halo to an impressed crowd at Macworld Expo. But the truth was a little different; the company was rapidly running out of money, and everyone understood that it didn’t have the funds to complete the project. This was around the time Microsoft started showing the first Xbox to developers, and Bungie was able to show Halo to Microsoft during a meeting in New York.

Microsoft was impressed, and it wanted the game as an exclusive for the Xbox. But Bungie wasn’t interested in just selling the game, according to Deniz, it wanted to sell the company. Microsoft’s Ed Fries went back to his bosses to ask for the budget to buy the developer.ars technica