Macworld has a quick chat with Bungie after this morning's big announcement that the company is "evolving" away from Microsoft a bit, and the good news is that a new Mac release from our favorite game developer (before they were bought out by the Evil Empire, that is) is not out of the question.

Spokeman Brian Jarrard plays pretty loose with the announcement, and says that while Bungie and Microsoft are going to retain their developer and publisher relationship, his company won't "rule out anything going forward." He says the move will let Bungie "[control] our destiny, and that puts us in a position where we could put ourselves back on the [Mac] platform definitively again."

We can only hope. EA and id games made a big appearance at this years' WWDC, and I think I speak for many, many Mac gamers when I say we'd love to see Bungie announcing a brand new game at Macworld in a few months.

Wow. The rumors were true -- Bungie is "evolving" its relationship with Microsoft, and "embarking on a path" to become, once again, an independent developer. Pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, the press release from MS makes it sound like Bungie's not quite free and clear yet. Microsoft expects Bungie to keep developing Halo, and working with them on future Halo-related projects. But that could be Microsoft just trying to look at things through rose-colored glasses. Or then again, it might not: the official word from Bungie is that they remain partners, and "nothing has changed." What a shame.

My official guess (TM) is that Bungie will release a brand new intellectual property, and that it will arrive not only on the Xbox, but on other consoles as well (possibly including the Mac, but let's not count our chickens before they hatch). For all their talk of a split, Bungie still isn't as independent as it once was. Microsoft is still in the picture, and it's pretty unlikely that Bungie will go back to developing specifically for the Mac again any time soon.

via x3f -- thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Rumors are flying in Seattle that Bungie, makers of Halo and, much more relevant here, Marathon and Pathways to Darkness, may be splitting from Microsoft. A complete and total rumor, unsubstantiated and unsourced, but like all good rumors, it has just enough good reasoning that it might actually be true. Microsoft certainly has no reason to let go of Bungie, but it's totally believable that Bungie is tired of being the Halo company, and ready to do some developing on its own again.

And of course, if Bungie breaks away to work on the platform of its choice, it's almost a given that we'll see a brand new Bungie game on the Mac. And how fortuitous, says Christopher Price-- he cites Bungie's rumored split as part of a trinity of Mac gaming developments lately that all point to one thing: Apple is poised to return to (and take over) gaming.

We are securely in rumorland here, so take all of this with a full tablespoon of salt. But you can smell the storm coming in terms of Apple and gaming-- something is brewing in Steve Jobs' head. I don't know if it will come on AppleTV (because of course that's a "hobby," and Apple's real power isn't in the set top box -- it's in the insanely fast and beautiful Macintosh computers), but the stars are aligning, and if Apple wants to get into gaming, it can definitely do it. Make no mistake -- Leopard is the priority right now, and likely will be through the end of the year. But next Christmas, don't be surprised if gamers want something under their tree from Apple.

Thanks, Christopher!

In the latest weekly update from Bungie, a fan asks: "Marathon and XBLA (referring to Xbox Live Arcade): is it at all possible?" Bungie, via Frankie, responds "Of course it's possible, it's just not on any current agenda. If it's any consolation, many, many people think it's a good idea."

It sucks that the statement is technically closer to a denial than a confirmation, but that won't matter: any time Bungie even mentions its legendary (originally Mac-only, I'll have you know) first person shooter series it's an excuse for Marathon fans to break out the bubbly. Just make sure you're not around when the fans swap the champagne for an M-75 combination assault rifle and grenade launcher after they realize that after they* stole Halo from the Mac platform for their* Xbox platform, they* could also be about to steal the definitive Mac game.

*"They" of course refers to a certain software company beginning with the word "Micro" and ending with the word "evil".

One of the last things Bungie did before Microsoft bought them (and their flagship game, Halo), was to release the Marathon code into the open source arena. Until not all that long ago, in order to play Marathon 2 or Infinity, you had to run it on a Mac OS 9 machine, or in Classic (or, shudder, on a Windows machine).

Enter Aleph One, the end result of some programmers having ported the game(s) to run natively under Mac OS X. They've included also the ability to connect to an Internet game server so you can play against other Marathon addicts around the world.

It's like it's 1998 all over again. I'm going to have fun with this over the long weekend. Who needs World of Warcraft when you've got Marathon Infinity...

Update: This is a better link for a download that includes the necessary game files as well as the carbonized application. The previous link was for just the application by itself.