Late 90’s, the news was that Microsoft acquired a gaming studio known to be a heavy Macintosh gaming creator that was working on an original intellectual property that could star in a secret gaming project based on Windows and later we found out it was Bungie from Seattle creating Halo.

Fast forward in 2007, Bungie decided to buy Microsoft’s stake to become independent again and Microsoft agreed, but with the condition that the Halo franchise remains with Microsoft as IP which Bungie agreed to focus on the game we now know as Destiny.

Today, seems like a proper review of in a quick version of Microsoft and Bungie relationship as The Verge saw new fillings ahead of Tomorrow’s Day 3 of the Preliminary Injunction that the FTC is requiring the Federal Court to hold Microsoft on buying Activision Blizzard which justified this review.

Microsoft considered on buying again Bungie as far as 2018 where Microsoft considered a major purchase spree of different gaming studios that included Thunderful, Supergiant Games, Niantic, Playrix, Zynga IO Interactive and Scopely during the shakeup to have Xbox Game Pass being as full of game.

It was specially mentioned that Sega Sammy was another target, mainly the home console video game studios as Microsoft saw Sega a big draw for Xbox Game Pass and having Sonic game collection along Yakuza and other IPs as appealing.

For IO Interactive, Microsoft labeled it with some of the other named studios as “final watchlist” in 2021, all before the opportunity of Activision Blizzard and the failure of buying Zynga changed everything.

Of course, nowadays is REALLY different with Bungie in particular as the company was ironically bought by Sony a year and a half ago and while it is a independent subsidiary and not under the Playstation Studios umbrella, Sony already requested assessment on in-development game and it was NAughty Dog failing an assigned one for the multiplayer of The Last Of Us, that provoked the game going back on square one in development.