"We want to convert Halo fans into Bungie fans"

Over 750,000 people played Halo 3 in the last 24 hours - so it's fair to say that Bungie has a pretty gargantuan community.

But even with one of the biggest shooter fanbases in consoles, Bungie acknowledges that it faces a big problem splitting from Microsoft and its fully-owned Halo IP. Will the Halo 3 players follow Bungie onto the next game, or will they be left behind with Microsoft?

"Not everyone that buys Halo knows what Bungie is," community lead Brian Jarrard told Edge magazine. "We want to convert Halo fans into Bungie fans and so we'll take them with us when we do the next game."

In a recent podcast, the Halo dev revealed that its next game will be "totally different" from Halo, perhaps another concern over whether or not the massive community will stick around.

PGR studio Bizarre Creations, who also split from Microsoft, expressed similar concerns over transferring its community to the next, non-Microsoft published game.

"When [PGR3] was released [we were afraid that] it would just become Microsoft's community and then, when we worked on the next game, we wouldn't be able to haul those people over to it and be able to keep them interested in Bizarre," community man Ben Ward told Edge. "That's difficult when you're independent."

Where do your loyalties lie? Tell us in theforums.

Courtesy of CVG.

Apr 11, 2008