No one is hating on 343 Industries for anything. My posts were about the original question about whether Bungie is happy or sad and possibly bitter. Yes a different company will bring a different approach and ideology to Halo. Just like Retro Studios brought a different approach to Donkey Kong and Metroid. But isn't it more likely, that while Bungie may shout from the rooftops that they are glad 343 Industries is carrying the mantle forward, that probably a significant amount of the employees at Bungie wished Halo remained with the studio? So that they could revisit it later on their own time and tell the stories they wanted to tell? Do you remember when the Halo film fell through? There was significant chatter about Bungie and Microsoft being at odds with how the franchise should be carried or run. Now it's been a while since Bungie has relinquished total control and for the foreseeable future, they will be busy with "The New Hotness(TM)", but it doesn't mean they wanted another studio to take the IP they created over 10 years, what studio would? If Bungie employees wanted to keep making Halo games now or carrying the studio forward, they would have. They didn't want to, which is precisely why they wanted to become independent again. If you don't want to think of the studio as a collective whole, then even individual employees, why didn't they jump ship to 343 Industries when it came to halo? A misconception around forums is that 343 Industries is made up of Bungie staff who loved Halo and wanted to keep making it. So far I can only count three former Bungie employees now working there. Frank O'Connor, Chad Armstrong (Shishka) and Vic DeLeon. Of these three, none of them worked on Halo:CE and I believe Frank was only community manager. An analogy I like to use, is JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series. Now the harry potter series is effectively finished. It is perhaps the highest grossing film and literature series in history. Now while JK Rowling sold the rights to Harry Potter for everything from toys to films to amusement parks. She retained any/all rights associated with the book. Let's say she was "down on her luck" again and forced to relinquish literary control of the Harry Potter series. Would she truly be happy if some other author comes and writes a new chapter in the series? Starts a whole new story? What about if Warner Bros. makes a new film that establishes a whole new story? Why is it any different for Bungie? Yes Bungie isn't an individual. But collectively, Bungie as an entity spent over 12 years making Halo what it is. To add to this point, did anyone here read the interview with Tony Goodman, founder of former Ensemble Studios that made Halo Wars? He stated that Bungie was not happy the Halo brand was being used for a different genre. He said, "another problem was that Bungie was never up for it... Bungie was kind of sore about the idea". Now yes this was when Bungie was still working on ODST and Reach at this point, but it shows how Bungie was protective of it's IP and didn't want it in the hands of a new studio. So, I'll end my rambling here yet again, but my final point is, IP's don't need to have a new game every year or two to be relevant to a studio. How many years did Nintendo go before making a new Star Fox, Metroid game? What about Earthbound? Just because Nintendo doesn't make/commission a new Earthbound game, means another studio should and that Nintendo would be happy about it. Ask any founder, developer in the industry. No studio wants to share IP's with another, and no studio wants to see an IP as big as Halo, an IP that basically made Bungie, that rivals some of the world's greatest gaming franchises, in the hands of another studio. Also tell me something,how happy do you think Bungie should be to see their own game franchise possibly go up against their own new franchise? Halo 4 may come out now, while Bungie's new game is Soon(TM). What about next gen? I think it would be the greatest insult for Halo to go up against bungie's new franchise, and probably even outsell it.