I hope you’re sitting down. According to a press release sent out this morning, Bungie has signed a 10 year exclusive publishing deal with Activision for their next big franchise. Given all the crap surround Activision’s handling of Infinity Ward, this is pretty surprising to say the least.

The deal will bring Bungie’s next big action game universe to “multiple platforms and devices”, which very well could mean we’ll see their next big thing on the PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, iPhone, PC, Mac, ColecoVision, Atari 2600, GameBoy Color, and Sega Master System. Am I trying to say that Activision has a storied history of exploiting their franchises until the market is beyond saturated? Nooooooo </sarcasm>. The wording of the press release sounds like this deal is focused around this new franchise only, but only time will tell who ends up publishing future Bungie games.

The good news here is that Bungie will retain ownership of any IP they create during this publishing deal and will still operate as an independent company. Hopefully everyone learned from what happened at Infinity Ward and history doesn’t repeat itself here.

Given their track record, I’m very excited to see what Bungie has in store past Halo. They never do anything quick and dirty, so hopefully we’ll get another franchise that everyone will want to sink countless hours into for years to come.