One of the biggest questions in the last year has been what Bungie, the studio behind the Halo franchise would do for their next game, the first since leaving Microsoft and the mega franchise they created behind for a new deal with Electronic Arts. Now, it looks like we’re getting our first look at concrete details for the title, from the most unlikely of sources — court documents spotted by the L.A. Times.
Recently released documents from the upcoming Zampella/West VS Activision trial that resulted in the founders of Infinity Ward splitting from the publishing giant have emerged and confirmed that Bungie is currently developing four “sci-fantasy, action shooter games” code-named “Destiny.” The first of these games is scheduled to come out in the fall of 2013, with subsequent releases in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
Here’s the interesting part, the contract says that the first Destiny game will be released on the Xbox 360 and the “next successor console released by Microsoft” (referred to as the Xbox 720 in the documents), but will release on the PlayStation 3 in the fall of 2014 after a “joint technical feasibility analysis” that will determine whether the game “is able to be developed for the PS3 at quality and feature parity to the Xbox 360 version.”
The documents also refer to downloadable content, known as “comet,” which will release in the fall of 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020.
Reading through the documents, there are also a few interesting bits not about the Destiny project; like how Bungie stands to make a hefty $2.5 million bonus if the first Destiny game receives an aggregate score of 90 or better on GameRankings.com. It also says that Bungie will use no more than 5% of its staff to create an updated version of their classic Marathon for E.A.
If the documents are to be believed, and the first game is due out in the fall of next year, an E3 reveal is looking likely. Blast will be bring you all of the up to date information from the Show of Shows as it hits next month.
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