350 developers is a lot. Lets say, for the sake of simplicity, that they cost $85k a year (salary plus benefits like insurance). We're talking about almost $30 million a year just on those developers- and that's not even counting administrative staff, buildings, equipment, and all the services that go around that.
At the same time, they have basically no other games coming out. They have no licensing for Halo, so that's all Microsoft's baby now. Other games they've talked about launching have failed to reach market.
The point being, they're burning through a lot of cash and don't seem to be producing anything but this game. If it flops then Bungie will probably continue to exist, but it certainly won't be the same company it is now.
They probably didn't start out at 350 developers. Early pre production would have been a much smaller team, with more developers added as the success of the project was more apparent. Still very risky, but at least they'll ship something interesting.
I would agree if we talked about a small/medium sized studio.
But with ~350 employees love is not in there anymore.
Its all about the ROI at the end and it has to be as high as possible. Probably the pitch for this game was something like "its like COD and Halo just BIGGER !!". To get a budget this size approved.
Everyone is fighting an uphill battle against WoW and my guess is an indie studio will take the crown in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, they have basically no other games coming out. They have no licensing for Halo, so that's all Microsoft's baby now. Other games they've talked about launching have failed to reach market.
The point being, they're burning through a lot of cash and don't seem to be producing anything but this game. If it flops then Bungie will probably continue to exist, but it certainly won't be the same company it is now.