Bungie has come a long way in the last few years. Although it was active throughout the 1990s, Bungie put itself on the map around the turn of the century by starting the Halo franchise. The first Halo game was an instant hit, and now it's one of the best known shooter franchises out there. Even though Bungie doesn't work on Halo anymore, it deserves a ton of credit for making the earliest and perhaps most influential games in the series. Now that it's left Halo to Microsoft, Bungie is still doing great thanks to Destiny and Destiny 2. These new looter-shooters have proven that there's a lot of talent at the studio.
In spite of the hugely influential titles that it's responsible for, though, Bungie hasn't produced any new IPs aside from Halo and Destiny. It's taken its time expanding outside of these series. However, lately Bungie has been talking a whole lot more about growing beyond Destiny, its chief bastion of profit and publicity. Bungie has made it clear that it wants to make a lot of new IPs in the future. Bungie's new habit of stressing these plans isn't too surprising when one remembers a recent move Bungie made. A few years ago, it copyrighted something called Matter, which sounds like a new game that Bungie wants to release. If Bungie's new games are going to crop up anytime soon, Matter will probably lead the charge.
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Even the most dedicated Bungie fans may not be aware of Matter, seeing how little is known about it so far. For those who don't know, the Matter copyright first showed up in Europe in 2018. Even though that discovery turned some heads, it didn't result in much information. Of course, Destiny 2 was still pretty new at the time, so it's no surprise Bungie wasn't quite yet making a big deal out of Matter or publicly teasing it in any way. A couple years later, though, some clues on Matter started to shine through. Some job listings connected to Matter give a sense that it'll be a little bit like Destiny 2, but very different tonally, and possibly in terms of setting too.
Bungie hasn't told fans anything about Matter despite all these little discoveries slipping out. Its emphasis has been entirely on Destiny 2's success. Even so, odds are good that Matter is a few years into development already, seeing how old the trademark is. It could be that Bungie comes forward and finally says something about Matter in the next couple years. Even though Destiny 2 has had a lot of expansions over the years, it's old enough now that it's probably not a major obstacle to Matter anymore. The question, then, is when exactly Bungie wants to the game to see the light of day. Although it seems like the game should be ready for a reveal sometime soon, Bungie seems to be suggesting that it's going to take longer than expected.
Bungie has been pretty public about upcoming games recently, repeating that it wants to branch out into new IPs. It'd be shocking if Matter isn't among the IPs that it want to launch soon. However, Bungie is sending a fairly contrary message. When it talked about its plans for releasing new IPs in April, it said that it wants to have a game unconnected to Destiny out by 2025. That's still pretty far away, so in a way it's odd that Bungie is even talking about it. One would expect that, if Bungie is teasing new games, those games would be coming out much closer to 2021. Maybe it's more important to Bungie to assure fans that it's working on other projects than it is to actually release those projects anytime soon.
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That leaves Matter in a bit of an odd limbo. If Matter isn't coming out for a few years, how is its development going? Is Bungie moving slowly on Matter on purpose? Does it want to keep the majority of its work on Destiny 2 for now? That would make sense for the short term, considering how important Destiny 2 is to Bungie's success, but the public conversations about upcoming IPs would suggest Bungie is focusing on the long term. It's pretty hard to get a read on where Bungie's new game concept are at in development.
No matter how many projects Bungie has in mind, it seems most likely that the mysterious Matter is at the forefront of Bungie's expansion initiative, just by virtue of how long the trademark has existed. Matter will probably be the first new game that Bungie talks about in the next couple years, even if it doesn't come out until 2025. Bungie has had a couple years to assemble the team that'll work on the game and to start developing some early components of the game. There might be enough content in place for Matter to get a proper reveal in 2022 or 2023.
The mystery around Matter's state of development and Bungie's plans isn't all bad, though. Frankly, it's just good to know that Bungie is working on new things and plans on doing more than just Destiny. The studio has garnered a lot of fans and consistently proven that it can deliver high-quality game experiences. Bungie is also growing in confidence and resources, as is proven by the end of its publishing deal with Activision. Bungie has taken on its own publishing responsibilities, which suggests it's confident that it can deliver on its new IPs without outside support for the releases.
If Bungie has really been working on new games for so long, then fans should at least be optimistic that it won't be much longer before it talks in detail about what it's actually up to. At the same time, though, Bungie has probably made the right decision by keeping Matter under wraps for so long instead of hyping it up publicly for years on end. There's already enough pressure on Bungie to come up with another strong IP after it made such influential games in the forms of Halo and Destiny. It's a good thing that Bungie wants to grow; it deserves to after all it's done for the game industry. Bungie might not be explicitly talking about Matter's development so far, but all of its hints about future games suggest that Matter will someday lead a charge.
Matter is in development.