New Bungie Game, Not Halo 4, In Pre-production

SPOnG breaks the news today that Microsoft's "big new IP" will actually be developed by Bungie, and that it will be unveiled at this year's X06 event, which runs between 27-28 September in Barcelona. We're obviously not talking about Halo 4 here, since Halo 3 is officially the last game in Bungie's trilogy. However, unofficially, SPOnG believes that another Halo trilogy - likely a prequel - will be announced at some point in the next 12 months.

The first spark was lit earlier this month by Eric Nylund, a Microsoft Game Studios employee "currently involved with the amazing Xbox 360 game, Gears of War". In his blog, Nylund vaguely hinted at Microsoft's yet to be announced game:

"What am I working on next? Well, if you took all the best parts of your favorite games, and smashed them together at light speed with your favorite movies and books, you'd get something close to this. It's not announced yet, but as soon as Microsoft does, I can at least tell you the title, genre, and what particular thing makes this game goose-bump worthy. So stay tuned."

Well SPOnG did more than just "staying tuned", and got in touch with a Microsoft source close to the management of the entire Xbox 360 project, who had this intriguing revelation to make:

"As far as things stand, Halo 3 is the last game [in the series] and it's more than just 'a thing to say' which I know came as a surprise to everyone [at Microsoft Game Studios not involved with the decision-making process] when it was announced. A new game from Bungie, not Halo 4, will be announced soon and pre-production has begun. So if you're looking for what to expect at X06, you should be looking at that."

Halo or not, as long as it's coming from Bungie, Xbox 360 gamers have all the reason to look forward to this year's X06 event. Although I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this before that!

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)