Originally Posted by The Article

On the first day of Apple Expo Paris, Mac publishing strongforceAspyr Media has announced that they've signed a deal with Bungie Studios founder Alex Seropian to publish the first game from Seropian's new development company, Wideload Games.

The company's new, still untitled game is expected to be released in the fall of 2005 on the Mac, Windows, and Xbox platforms - a first for the revered game publishers. The title, despite relying on the Halo engine, is billed as a very different and unique gaming experience. Says Seropian, from an IGN interview:
It's a very different game. There are some things about the Halo engine that are really cool. We use a lot of the same systems and developed them in the same way. There's a certain quality to the way things are presented that you may recognize. But it's a very different game. You won't be playing it going, 'Dude, it's just like Halo!'


In 2002, Seropian, the lead producer behind Bungie's ground-breaking Marathon, Myth, and Halofranchises, left the company he founded after its greatly-publicized purchase by Microsoft. In April of this year, Seropian announced that he and a number of former senior Bungie programmers, designers, and artists had bonded to create a new game development company with a twist.

In an effort to reduce as many game production risks as possible, Wideload's business model sees the company's relatively small staff build a game prototype first, then use the prototype to secure a publishing deal, and the financing to hire the production staff to complete the project. While this is a new business model for game developers, similar staffing practices in the film industry have proven to be efficient and cost-effective. Seropian sees this new business practice gaining popularity in the gaming industry -
Everybody's gonna be doing this. The platform studios will have large teams -- Even those teams will be outsourcing stuff. I think it's a natural progression of gaming. Game ideas have to germinate somewhere. If you're gonna have 100 people working on it, you need a process that doesn't dilute that vision.


While little else is known about the new title, this announcement represents a major coup for Michael Rogers and the hard-working staff at Aspyr Media. Once a little Mac-only publishing house, Aspyr is slowly growing into a multimedia powerhouse, selling music, movies, and publishing games for the Mac, PC, and Gameboy Advance platforms.

Stay tuned to IMG as further news about the upcoming game and the new business alliance surfaces, and check out the official press release over on Aspyr's website: