News website FierceGameBiz.com today featured a report that Microsoft is be taken to court by a French developer In-Fusio for supposedly backing out of a contract to develop a portable version of it's well known [i]Halo/[/i] franchise. In addition to this In-Fusio, which had signed a contract with Microsoft for a total of $2,000,000 dollars with Microsoft, is withholding two of the four promised payments, each totaling $500,000 to Microsoft after the company rejected In-Fusio's preliminary design for the game. Microsoft has used this denial of payment as cause for invalidating the contract with In-Fusio. The deal was announced last September with the intention of creating a version of [i]Halo[/i] to be used on mobile phones. Initially there would be cellphone wallpapers and ring tones made available to the public prior to the release of the game itself. In-Fusio, however, has alleged that Microsoft had not reciprocated in the effort to develop said game and, consequently, In-Fusio has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft. The official wording on the suit reads as follows.
"Microsoft has thwarted In-Fusio's efforts to develop Halo under the agreement. Indeed, in the last 11 months, Microsoft has approved no fully developed In-Fusio game designs; ignoring and then refusing to accept In-Fusio's game design concepts with little or no explanation and leaving In-Fusio little basis to revise its concepts to obtain Microsoft's approval."
For more information read the original article at http://www.fiercegamebiz.com/story/ms-sued-over-halo-mobile-game/2007-01-02 You can also obtain additional information at http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=21961.
Stay tuned to MyGamer.com for more information on this case as it becomes available.
Nick McCavitt at nmccavitt@forumwizard.net
Nick McCavitt at nmccavitt@forumwizard.net