I love reading Steve Jobs outbursts stories. Dude has the best bitter face on the planet, and purportedly goes bonkers whenever he feels slighted. So, with great pleasure I bring you this little piece of anecdotal news: a long time ago, when Microsoft bought then-nearly-Mac-exclusive studio Bungie, Jobs got ticked off enough to give Microsoft a ring. In an effort to calm the man down, Microsoft brokered a deal to help port a couple of games to the Mac, one of which might have been the Halo: Combat Evolved port in 2003.
This news--which is old news now--stems from a recent Ed Fries interview with Develop. Fries was once the VP of games publishing at Microsoft and supposedly dealt with Jobs after he showed Microsoft how angry he was about the Bungie deal.
"As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called," Fries said. “He was mad at [Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we’d just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer.”
== TEASER ==Fries continued with his story, saying that Ballmer emailed him and told him to "calm [Jobs] down about the whole thing." Part of that soothing effort was a game-porting deal. According to Fries, Microsoft helped Peter Tamte create a company to do these ports.
Bungie probably hasn't looked back since its acquisition. Halo, if I'm recalling correctly, went on to become a pretty big franchise for Microsoft and both Xbox platforms. Bungie has since flown the coop and has started working on a new franchise under an exclusive, 10-year Activision publishing deal. I wonder if Ballmer has called Kotick yet?
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