Halo house Bungie filed four copyrights over the summer of 2010, including "Osiris," "Dead Orbit," "New Monarchy" and "Seven Seraphs," raising speculation about future projects.
The U.S. Copyright Office filings -- uncovered by internet sleuth
Superannuation -- were filed in late July 2010, following Bungie's
signing of an exclusive 10-year publishing partnership with Activision, announced last April.
Three of the terms copyrighted -- "Dead Orbit," "New Monarchy" and "Seven Seraphs" -- had domain names registered on September 20 last year.
The sites were also registered under the same information as the "Bungie Aerospace" domain, which sparked internet speculation in March 2010.
Bellevue, WA-based
Halo creator Bungie spun off of former parent Microsoft in 2007 and is now a privately-owned game developer. Its most recent release was last year's
Halo Reach, published by Microsoft.
Under the partnership with Activision, the publisher will bring Bungie's "next big action game" to market. Little is known about the project -- or whether the newly-discovered copyrights are related to it -- although the game is believed to have a heavy emphasis on online play.
[
UPDATE: A
job posting on Bungie's site seeks a developer with mobile experience to "define the interface of Bungie's next gaming universe to the world," suggesting some sort of mobile component for a new project.]
