Details on new Bungie game revealed in Activision court case

As part of a court dispute, a California court saw fit to unseal contracts between Activision and Halo developer, Bungie, pertaining to their upcoming collaboration. While the contracts contain mostly business information, and none of the fun stuff (in-game information) we pulled a few juicy tidbits from the report.

As was previously known, the contract bound famed developer Bungie to infamous publisher Activision, and tasked them with creating a new "sci-fantasy action" video game series. Up until now, all we really knew was that the game was neither Halo nor Marathon, two of Bungie's previous games.

According to the LA Times which first viewed the documents, the contract is for a game code-named "Destiny" which will be the first of a series that will release every other year starting in Fall 2013. The contract also bound Bungie to release four DLC packs for each game, which are codenamed "Comet."

These releases are scheduled to be releasing on both Xbox 360 as well as Microsoft's next system which is referred to as "Xbox 720." The first game will be exclusive to the Xbox 360, but future games will branch out and be available on PS3 and/or its successor.

Another interesting note that was revealed, shows that Bungie was explicitly given the right to devote 5% of its work force toward developing a sequel to the cult Mac-hit Marathon.

Now that the cat is - ever so slightly - out of the bag, we're wondering if we'll hear anything about this project at E3 in a couple weeks. However, with a Fall 2013 release date, that seems unlikely.

Andrew Groen

Andrew is a freelance video game journalist, writing for sites like Wired and GamesRadar. Andrew has also written a book called EMPIRES OF EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online.