KILLER APP

November also marks the 20th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved’s release. At what point did Bungie realise it had a runaway hit (and an Edge 10) on its hands? “This may sound ridiculous at this point, 20 years later, but we didn’t feel like the spotlight was on us at all,” Staten says. “There was an Oddworld game [Munch’s

Oddysee] coming out, and people believed that was really going to be the key title.” And when that spotlight did turn Bungie’s way? “One of my early memories of those days was when Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer came to visit Bungie. They came to see, like, ‘What was this thing that just happened on our giant spreadsheet?’ And they were very nice and generous with their time and asked really great questions. But there definitely was this feeling of ‘What just happened over here, in this part of Microsoft?’”