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Myth II Shipping Date Set?
[5:26 AM] Sources close to Bungie's development efforts have reported that a target shipping date for Myth II: Soulblighter has been set internally at Bungie. Myth II is the soon to be released sequel to the wildly popular Myth: The Fallen Lords real-time strategy game released last year at this time. Bungie has been very tight lipped so far in regards to a shipping date, but it seems that internal targets put the shipping date at December 6th, placing the game on store shelves around December 9th.

The new version will feature new units, new multi-player game options, an improved 3D engine (one source says that a good 3Dfx card will allow you to see the wings on the flies that buzz around a character called a wight) and interactive elements to maps.

Bungie has made Myth into such a hit in part because of the excellent net play possible on bungie.net, their exclusive online gaming network. Myth II will offer improved net play with up to 16 players, the ability to find one's friends, an improved ranking system, and the ability to rank orders (online groups or clans).

Webintosh has learned some other exciting news about Myth II, but we do not want to spoil Bungie's plans for this excellent new Mac game. It is important to note that Bungie's shipping plans could very well change in the next two weeks, but our source said that the date was set "quite recently." Myth fans around the globe can only hope that they are able to meet that goal. Good Luck Bungie!

The Mac Observer Spin: Bungie is the single most important game developer for the Macintosh platform. While they do not put out as many games as porting companies like MacSoft, they perform an even more important role of actually developing Mac games from the ground up. Bungie first made waves with the 1st person shooter Pathways to Darkness and followed that up with Marathon, which was the first and only major Mac-only 1st person shooter. Marathon 2 was ported to the PC but drowned in a sea of mediocre games. The follow-up, Marathon Infinity, was once again a hugely successful Mac-only game. With Myth, the company decided to make a simultaneous Hybrid release, but according to Bungie developers, much of the code was written on the Mac as both versions were developed simultaneously.

In addition to game development, Bungie is one of the largest independent companies that also publishes their own (and other's) games. This means they have developed their own distribution channels, an area which is both very expensive and very difficult. The importance of all this to Mac gamers and Mac users is that Bungie showed the world that the Mac is a great gaming platform and that they could make money by doing a ground-up Mac game. A lot of industry eyes are going to be on Bungie with the release of Myth II to see if that success was a fluke. If they are as successful as Webintosh thinks they will be with this release, we could see the floodgates finally start to open on more ground-up Mac games.

Myth garnered a ton of awards, including:

• Game of the Year-Computer Games Strategy Plus
• Game of the Year - Macworld Magazine
• Strategy Game of the Year - Computer Gaming World
• Realtime Strategy Game of the Year - PC Gamer
• The "A" List - PC Games
• Top 50 Games of All Time - OGR.com
• Freakin' Awesome Rating - MacAddict
  

Myth II promises to earn Bungie even more!