Bungie Cancels Announcement, Microsoft Confirms New Halo Game

Confusion has reigned over plans by Halo developer Bungie to announce a new game at E3 this week, with a countdown on their website being removed as a result of publisher changes. The timer was due to expire today, with rumors suggesting that Bungie was about to announce a new, possibly non-Halo related, title. The front page of the Bungie website has now been replaced with what appears to be a screen grab of an e-mail from Bungie president Harold Ryan. The message reads: “For the last several months, we’ve been building toward a reveal of something exciting that Bungie is working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher. We realize that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment. When the right time comes, we look forward to sharing this exciting announcement with you. Until then, we appreciate your continued support and patience.” Following the announcement an interview with Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s senior vice president of interactive entertainment business, on weblog MTV Multiplayer revealed that the game in question may in fact be a new Halo game. According to Mattrick, Bungie is developing a game for Microsoft that is neither Ensemble Studio’s real-time strategy Halo Wars, nor Peter Jackson’s Halo Chronicles project.