Bungie wanted to be an independent company once more and didn't want to making Halo and [i]only[/i] Halo for the rest of their existence as a company, so they negotiated leaving Microsoft. And since M$ owns Halo, Bungie couldn't take it with them. If they could have, they'd have gladly taken the Halo series with them when they went.....would have been for the best >__> Unfortunately we're left with the series in M$ hands and with 3fail3idiocy running it into the ground *sigh* .....hopefully all the rumors constantly going around all the time eventually prove true about Microsoft scrapping/selling off the Xbox division and Bungie can get back what's rightfully theirs, or at least it wind up with someone that will actually respect the series and do well with it....