I'd forgotten about that. Makes me wonder even more why they chose to partner with Activison of all publishers.
Because they're the publisher that could do what they wanted. Activision also has MMO experience via Blizzard. They've also largely stepped out of the way re: content policy. We're not privy to the pitches back and forth between Bungie and various potential partners.
I rib MS a lot as well, but really, they were a publisher too. Publishers can do stuff you don't like, but they also allow you to do things you can't do on your own. If you want access to their money, connections, infrastructure and expertise, you have to make some tradeoffs. You want to do something creative, they need to ensure their investment. You want to make a game for your fans, they want to sell your game to people that don't know about you yet. Absolutely nobody will give you a lot of money and just go "do whatever you want, we'll just write checks". That just doesn't happen. Ever.
And Bungie shouldn't be intersted self publishing. Sadly, as I've posted elsewhere, the industry has many graves filled with companies that tried to be everything and spread themselves too thin, because they were too concerned over having a label of self-publish vs rational expectation. I'm guessing they realized this and this is why Bungie Aerospace was quietly ended. When you let the publisher do the publishing you get to focus on the developing. Same with their run under Microsoft. Hell, if Bungie had been self publishing, we wouldn't even have Bungie today. That's an absolute fact. They wouldn't have made it without Microsoft to weather their storms.
Ultimately, the Marty v Bungie is "bunch of people fighting over money and it got to a point that went public". It looks the situation is now resolved after some punches back and forth from both parties. I also expect certain people close to certain sides to feel very emotional and public over it; there is nothing wrong with that, because people get emotionally invested in their work and business.. Kind awkward for people friendly with people on both sides of the equation, but it tends to happen when you involve money in relationships.
I don't think anyone on any side of this finds this enjoyable, at any rate.
Wasn't there story there that they didn't want to show it at the press conference or something strange? I can't remember exactly but... a Halo game should be at one of Microsoft's biggest shows which is presumably how they (MS) felt too
Bungie wanted to show Halo 3: ODST (Then called Recon) off at E3. They had a documentary and reveal all lined up and planned for it. Don Mattrick killed it in the 11th hour to advertise the game at a much later time. As a result all their plans were scuttled and the documentary never saw the light of day.
There's a whole long line of story and so on over that, but the letter was because Bungie had a countdown and everything going and after Mattrick pulled the plug, they had to put that up.