FiringSquad just got off the phone with Bungie's long time community spokesperson Frank O'Connor who chatted with us briefly about the game developer's newly announced break away from its parent company Microsoft to once again become an independent game developer. O'Connor told us that negotiations with Microsoft on this move began a year ago and that the developer is 100 percent owned by Bungie, although O'Connor did say that Bungie has retained unnamed "experts" to help in the transition to the new independent version. So why break away from Microsoft which has helped Bungie become one of the most well known game developers in the world. O'Connor told us that this new arrangement will in part help Bungie to make decisions on their own without having to wait for the parent company to approve them. For example under the old way Bungie would have to work with contractors that would be approved by Microsoft. Under the independent Bungie, the company can now work faster to hire contractors and make other decisions that perhaps might take longer under Microsoft.

Some people have speculated that the move to a new independent Bungie was because the developer was tired of working on the Halo franchise, the first person shooter series of games that has generated millions of copies in sales. O'Connor told us, however, that such claims are "exaggerated" and said they still have a fondness for the Halo franchise and might return to the Halo universe one day (of course two other upcoming Halo games, the RTS title Halo Wars and the unnamed Peter Jackson lead Halo game, are being directly handled by other developers). O'Connor did say that for the foreseeable future future games made at Bungie will continue to be made for the Xbox 360 console; they have no plans to even return to making games for the PC or Macintosh platforms.

O'Connor told us that currently Bungie has about 120 employees and will still be based in their Kirkland, Washington offices (Bungie was originally based in Chicago before being bought by Microsoft in 2000). Harold Ryan, who has been the studio manager at Bungie for some time, is now the new President of the now independent studio. They are also hiring for new team members but O'Connor would not comment on how many more people Bungie is looking to add to the team in the coming months. As far as specifics about their future plans, at the moment O'Connor said that they are concentrating on making downloadable content for the just released Halo 3 but that they have a "skunk works" department that is in charge of developing new ideas for games. It should be interesting to see how being out of Microsoft's direct control will change Bungie and how it will allow the studio to have more freedom to create non-Halo themed games.

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