Bungie Unveils First Title In 'Aerospace' Program

The first game to debut out of the Bungie Aerospace program will be Crimson: Steam Pirates, a steampunk pirate-themed real-time strategy and action game for the iPad. Crimson is being developed by the small team at Harebrained Schemes under the creative direction of Jordan Weisman, the former FASA Corporation founder and the creator of franchises that include BattleTech, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies. According to the game's official site, Crimson will feature multiplayer modes and be integrated with Bungie.net for stats, leaderboards, and Facebook synchronization. "I felt that the game I was developing could be warmly received from Bungie's audience," Weisman recently told us. "There are 350,000 apps in the App Store, sometimes it's pretty hard to get noticed. It's a combination of helping make a better game and have an audience to present it to as a launching point." As with Weisman's previous franchises, Crimson: Steam Pirates is part of a larger Crimson universe, with a deep amount of lore already written for players to absorb. The Bungie Aerospace program sees the studio that created Microsoft's Halo franchise providing resources, assistance and exposure to independent mobile and social game developers. Bungie itself is still primarily focused on developing its new universe with Activision. This is the second iOS application associated with Bungie, the first being a community-focused application for players of its console games. Crimson: Steam Pirates will be available on Apple's App Store for free on September 1.