It’s been nearly 10 years since Halo: Combat Evolved was released as a launch title for the original Xbox. During the past decade, Bungie has released five games under the Halo umbrella, all of which have been both critically and financially successful. Now though, as Bungie moves on from the Halo franchise that has long been their calling card, the developer wants to change the way that people view them. Bungie wants to separate itself from the rest of the pack the same way that Blizzard and Valve have.

In a recent interview, award winning composer Martin O’Donnell, who's worked on Myst and the Halo series, said that Bungie wants to gain more notoriety as an independent studio, not just as 'The Halo people.' The biggest challenge will be creating new games, based on new IP, without alienating their current fans.

"There's absolutely no way that we don't evolve. And by evolve I mean we're not going to do something so revolutionary that we leave all of our fans and community behind and they're just like, 'What the heck is this?'...We love the games we make. We love our fans. We're not just going to suddenly do something that's so out of left field that nobody can relate to it. It just doesn't make sense. We totally are thinking, 'How do we bring our community along with us?'"

O'Donnell also went on to say that he wants to make sure that Bungie is recognized as a whole, and that he doesn't want one or two people to become 'rock stars' in the industry. O'Donnell points to Blizzard and Valve as examples of companies that constantly turn out quality content without needing stardom for any one specific person (a la Epic Games).

"I think individual stars in the game industry, we have examples of that and they're out there but that hasn't been Bungie's way. I don't think it's Blizzard's way; I don't think it's Valve's way...we've been friends with a lot of those Blizzards guys for years and we have a lot of respect for them and I don't think about individual rock stars in Blizzard as much as I think about Blizzard. If it's a Blizzard game it's going to be amazing. And we hope the same thing happens for Bungie."

The conversation brings up an interesting question, can Bungie be successful with something other than Halo? Nothing is known about the new IP that Bungie is working on for Activition (even though beta invites have already been sent out), so we can only speculate how similar it may be to Halo. Bungie had been successful prior to Halo, with the first two games of the Myth series, but that was in the late 1990s.

Can Bungie be successful with a game that isn't Halo? What do you think the new IP they're developing for Activision is? Can Bungie reach the level of Blizzard or Valve? Let us know your answer to all these questions in the comments or on Twitter.

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Source: Industry Gamers