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 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<ref>"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 below.</ref>, 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 at least $1 million to correct<ref>See Bungie's 20th Anniversary documentary, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtG6--4r_qk O Brave New World]'', 6 minute mark.</ref>. 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; on August 13, 1999, it was announced that Bungie had 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 console versions of future, unannounced Bungie games)<ref>[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/946581/0000891554-00-000145.txt SEC 10-K filing for Take Two Interactive, 10/31/99].</ref>.
+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 at least $1 million to correct<ref>See Bungie's 20th Anniversary documentary, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtG6--4r_qk O Brave New World]'', 6 minute mark.</ref>. 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 to partner with Take Two Interactive; on August 13, 1999, it was announced that Take Two had acquired 19.9% of Bungie's shares in exchange for (1) payments to Bungie 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 console versions of future, unannounced Bungie games)<ref>[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/946581/0000891554-00-000145.txt SEC 10-K filing for Take Two Interactive, 10/31/99].</ref>.
 This deal didn't seem to change business 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 by Bungie to find a buyer for the company. Bungie worked out the following deal with Take Two 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.<ref>[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/946581/000112528201000221/0001125282-01-000221.txt SEC 10-K filing for Take Two Interactive, 10/31/00].</ref><ref>The sale of Bungie to Microsoft has an interesting historical footnote: according to Ed Fries, who was VP of game publishing at Microsoft, Steve Jobs angrily called Steve Ballmer immediately after the Bungie acquisition was announced; sources within Bungie state that Apple themselves had been close to offering to buy Bungie at the time. In order to appease Apple (a business partner of Microsoft) over the loss of a major Mac game developer, a new company was formed to port Windows games to the Mac, named Destineer, and headed up by none other than Peter Tamte of Bungie. Destineer would go on to port Halo to the Mac in 2003. ([http://www.develop-online.net/news/36173/Steve-Jobs-raged-at-Microsoft-over-game-studio-sale], [http://www.develop-online.net/news/36183/Ex-Bungie-dev-Apple-got-close-to-buying-us], [http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=173])</ref>