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Oni: Difference between revisions
+massive history dump; let's finally start putting all the facts together here for posterity
(→The future of the property: adding a point of interest (hopefully accurate)) |
(+massive history dump; let's finally start putting all the facts together here for posterity) |
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Oni was originally expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 1999, but as that date approached, the release date was pushed back. This occurred repeatedly, until finally the rumored release date was as late as March 2001. Much of the uncertainty over Oni's status came from Bungie's well-known reluctance to disclose or adhere to fixed release dates. Some of the delay may have come from staff turnover and development issues; a Design Lead position was created in the summer of 1999 for newcomer Hardy LeBel, who immediately began rewriting the story. Pease left at the end of 1999 (with his Project Lead title being passed to Michael Evans) and Bungie West also lost one of their two level designers and replaced the AI programmer in the same six-month period between the summer and the end of 1999. | Oni was originally expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 1999, but as that date approached, the release date was pushed back. This occurred repeatedly, until finally the rumored release date was as late as March 2001. Much of the uncertainty over Oni's status came from Bungie's well-known reluctance to disclose or adhere to fixed release dates. Some of the delay may have come from staff turnover and development issues; a Design Lead position was created in the summer of 1999 for newcomer Hardy LeBel, who immediately began rewriting the story. Pease left at the end of 1999 (with his Project Lead title being passed to Michael Evans) and Bungie West also lost one of their two level designers and replaced the AI programmer in the same six-month period between the summer and the end of 1999. | ||
Possible additional factors were the introduction of the development of a PS2 port to be released in tandem with Oni for Windows/Mac, a deal struck with [http://www.take2games.com/ Take-Two Interactive] in August of 1999, and the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft, which was announced in June of 2000. It is also possible that the acquisition of the Oni IP by Take Two in 2000 | Possible additional factors were the introduction of the development of a PS2 port to be released in tandem with Oni for Windows/Mac, a deal struck with [http://www.take2games.com/ Take-Two Interactive] in August of 1999, and the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft, which was announced in June of 2000. It is also possible that the acquisition of the Oni IP by Take Two in 2000 interfered with plans for a more timely release. The details of the MS/T2 situation are explained in the "Post-release" section below. | ||
==Hype== | ==Hype== | ||
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Due to the delays in Oni's development, Bungie suspended the advertising of the game for a time, so as not to spend the budget before the game was even released. In the meantime, the game under development at Bungie's HQ in Chicago, which was previously known only by its code name "Blam", came to be known as Halo and slowly drew attention away from the oft-delayed Oni as images and trailers for it began to appear. | Due to the delays in Oni's development, Bungie suspended the advertising of the game for a time, so as not to spend the budget before the game was even released. In the meantime, the game under development at Bungie's HQ in Chicago, which was previously known only by its code name "Blam", came to be known as Halo and slowly drew attention away from the oft-delayed Oni as images and trailers for it began to appear. | ||
As Oni finally neared completion, Bungie resumed their advertising, now partnered with Take Two, who were in the process of taking over the Oni [[wikipedia:Intellectual_property|IP]] as Bungie prepared to join Microsoft. Promotional artwork was produced by [[Lorraine|Lorraine Reyes McLees]] and a 4-volume [[Dark_Horse_comics|comic]] was produced under T2's supervision and published by Dark Horse. | As Oni finally neared completion, Bungie resumed their advertising, now partnered with Take Two, who were in the process of taking over the Oni [[wikipedia:Intellectual_property|IP]] as Bungie prepared to join Microsoft. Promotional artwork was produced by [[Lorraine|Lorraine Reyes McLees]] and a 4-volume [[Dark_Horse_comics|comic]] was produced under T2's supervision and published by Dark Horse. T2's PR efforts, however, seem to have been focused mainly on the PS2 version of the game. | ||
==Release== | ==Release== | ||
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''Oni and the makers of Oni went their separate ways. First we look at the direction Bungie took, then we come back to the game.''<br> | ''Oni and the makers of Oni went their separate ways. First we look at the direction Bungie took, then we come back to the game.''<br> | ||
'''Bungie'''<br> | '''Bungie'''<br> | ||
Bungie had seemed to enjoy great success as an independent publisher ever since they released [[wikipedia:Pathways into Darkness|Pathways into Darkness]] in 1993. However, Bungie was initially a Macintosh developer, and the Mac's limited market share meant that their sales never went above 200,000 units<sup>5</sup>, even after releasing [[wikipedia:Marathon Trilogy|Marathon 2]] for both Mac and Windows. Bungie also took advantage of their indie status to reject the strict deadlines which are normally enforced by video game publishers, refusing to release their games until they were completely finished. | |||
It is believed that Bungie began suffering from a shortage of cash around 1998 when the Myth II uninstaller bug was discovered and cost them around $1 million to correct. This might have been difficult to absorb for a studio not accustomed to a disciplined release schedule. The next game to release after Myth II was to be Oni in 1999, but as Oni's release date began to slide more and more, it became clear that Bungie had underestimated the time required to finish the game by more than usual. In the meantime, Bungie was bankrolling two studios instead of one. Thus, the decision was made in 1999 to partner with Take Two Interactive; Bungie traded 19.9% of their stock to T2 in exchange for (1) payments of $4 million now and $1 million the next year, (2) the North America publishing [[rights]] to Oni, Myth, and two additional future titles for the PC, and (3) publishing rights for a PlayStation 2 port of Oni (and possibly other console versions of anticipated games). | |||
The acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft also meant the dissolution of Bungie West as Bungie moved their employees to Redmond, Washington. Some Oni developers stayed with Bungie and went on to work on the Halo series, while others ended up at independent game studios, such as | This deal didn't seem to change much for Bungie, but considerably more shocking news was revealed on June 19, 2000, when Bungie announced its acquisition by Microsoft. It turned out that Bungie's monetary woes had not been solved by T2's influx of cash, and so MacSoft founder Peter Tamte had been hired to call around to different companies on Bungie's behalf, looking for a buyer. Bungie worked out the following deal with T2 in order to be free to join Microsoft: T2 sold its 19.9% stake of Bungie to MS for its original purchase price of $5 million; T2 then traded its publishing rights for Halo back to Bungie for (1) $4 million in cash, (2) a license to use the Halo engine to make two future titles, and (3) for full "right, title and interest" to the Myth franchise and Oni. T2 valued the IP acquisition of Oni at $2.8 million, and the Myth IP and Halo engine license at $1.5 million each.<sup>6</sup> | ||
The sale of Bungie to Microsoft has an interesting historical footnote: according to Ed Fries, the VP of game publishing at Microsoft, Steve Jobs angrily called Steve Ballmer immediately after the Bungie acquisition was announced; according to sources within Bungie, Apple themselves had been close to offering to buy Bungie at the time. In order to appease Apple (a business partner of Microsoft), a new company was formed to port Windows games to the Mac, named Destineer, and headed up by none other than Peter Tamte. Destineer would go on to port Halo to the Mac in 2003. | |||
The acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft also meant the dissolution of Bungie West as Bungie moved their employees to Redmond, Washington. Some Oni developers stayed with Bungie and went on to work on the Halo series, while others ended up at independent game studios, such as Giant Bite (co-founded by Chu & Evans) and Tyrant Studios (founded by LeBel). | |||
In October of 2007, Bungie separated from Microsoft and moved from Redmond to the nearby city of Kirkland. | In October of 2007, Bungie separated from Microsoft and moved from Redmond to the nearby city of Kirkland. | ||
'''Oni'''<br> | '''Oni'''<br> | ||
While Bungie merged into Microsoft, and Take Two was assuming command of the Oni IP, Mac users were in | Clearly Take Two expected big things from Oni (see their valuation of Oni above, as well as their promotional efforts under the "Hype" section). They had assigned Rockstar Toronto to work on a PS2 port of Oni around the end of 1999, and released it alongside the Windows and Mac versions of Oni; however, the port was considered to be an inferior version of the game due to technical limitations and control issues. At first, Take-Two intended to make both an Oni 2 (developed for PS2 by Angel Games, later known as Rockstar San Diego) and an Oni prequel (developed for [[wikipedia:Wireless_Application_Protocol|WAP]]-enabled cell phones by Quantum Sheep), but the games were canceled at an early stage of development, possibly because Oni itself did not meet T2's expected sales quotas. | ||
While Bungie merged into Microsoft, and Take Two was assuming command of the Oni IP, Mac users were in their own delicate position: transitioning to Mac OS X. Having been in development years before OS X released, the original build of the Oni application was a Carbon app, meaning it was written primarily for Mac OS 9 with only basic OS X compatibility. Unfortunately the Carbon build was not without issues when running in OS X. | |||
Then, at the end of 2001, [http://www.omnigroup.com Omni Group] [http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/omni-press/2001/000008.html released] a Cocoa (native OS X) build of the game which they had produced for free. However, Apple would later switch to Intel processors, moving away from the PowerPC chip that Oni was built for. This and other elements of the OS and hardware have changed over the years, making the Omni port unable to run on modern Macs without fan-devised patches. Recently, Feral (the Mac version's distributor outside of the U.S.) has expressed an interest in putting out an Intel-native build of Oni in 2011. | Then, at the end of 2001, [http://www.omnigroup.com Omni Group] [http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/omni-press/2001/000008.html released] a Cocoa (native OS X) build of the game which they had produced for free. However, Apple would later switch to Intel processors, moving away from the PowerPC chip that Oni was built for. This and other elements of the OS and hardware have changed over the years, making the Omni port unable to run on modern Macs without fan-devised patches. Recently, Feral (the Mac version's distributor outside of the U.S.) has expressed an interest in putting out an Intel-native build of Oni in 2011. | ||
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::(laughs) Oni isn't currently one of those projects we're looking at, but one should never say never.<br> We'd be happy to work with the individuals who made Oni. | ::(laughs) Oni isn't currently one of those projects we're looking at, but one should never say never.<br> We'd be happy to work with the individuals who made Oni. | ||
One thing is certain: the current Bungie staff has little in common with the Bungie West that produced Oni (there are seven members<sup> | One thing is certain: the current Bungie staff has little in common with the Bungie West that produced Oni (there are seven members<sup>7</sup> still working at Bungie as of March 2011). There is probably little sentimental or monetary incentive for Bungie to produce a sequel. Furthermore, it was announced in May 2010 that Bungie was developing a new IP, to be published by Activision under a ten-year contract. | ||
However, there are [[Oni2|fan projects]] which may or may not become unofficial "Oni 2"s. | However, there are [[Oni2|fan projects]] which may or may not become unofficial "Oni 2"s. | ||
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<sup>4</sup>[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/newmay-june98.html Oni discussion] on the Marathon Story Page. Bungie fans first started talking about the newly-announced Oni (and the E3 1998 trailer) back in May-June 1998, unaware that it would not release for another two and a half years. | <sup>4</sup>[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/newmay-june98.html Oni discussion] on the Marathon Story Page. Bungie fans first started talking about the newly-announced Oni (and the E3 1998 trailer) back in May-June 1998, unaware that it would not release for another two and a half years. | ||
<sup>5</sup>The employees in Oni's credits that still work at Bungie are Butcher, Dunn, the McLees, O'Donnell, Staten and Wu. Only Butcher and Wu actually worked at Bungie West. | <sup>5</sup>"200,000 units" figure taken from Dean Takahashi's book "Opening the Xbox", which also provided some of the details for the Apple story given in this section. | ||
<sup>6</sup>Dollar amounts and details taken directly from T2's public 10-K filing. | |||
<sup>7</sup>The employees in Oni's credits that still work at Bungie are Butcher, Dunn, the McLees, O'Donnell, Staten and Wu. Only Butcher and Wu actually worked at Bungie West. | |||
[[Category:Oni history]] | [[Category:Oni history]] | ||