E3 fighting gives Microsoft the biggest news at Tokyo Game Show

One good thing that came out of all the fussing and feuding between Microsoft and Bungie during E3: the Xbox 360 maker had the biggest news to announce at Tokyo Game Show by far.

"Halo 3: Recon" (info here; trailer here) is, of course, the game that Bungie was going to announce at E3 back in July. But Microsoft didn't like that Bungie planned to handle press for its franchise and not only did it force Bungie to cancel the announcement, but it left out all mentions of "Halo" from its press conferene, including the Ensemble-developed "Halo Wars," which was on display at the show. (relive the fun here)

How did that work in terms of press strategy? For Microsoft, pretty well. It had plenty of significant news at E3, from the Xbox Live re-design to "Final Fantasy XIII" coming to Xbox 360 to the Netflix partnership to "Lips." Now at Tokyo Game Show, it easily overshadowed competition by having a new "Halo" game to announce, along with "Tekken 6" coming to 360 and some other RPG stuff. Sure Japan is the market least interested in "Halo," but still, news is news.

Bungie, however, lost out on the opportunity to establish its new independent identity since splitting from Microsoft last year by making its own announcement, or even "co-announcing" by coming out on stage with its "partner" Microsoft for the news. Even though Microsoft owns the "Halo" franchise, it's not all that unreasonable for Bungie to stake a claim to the news, since the deal to produce  "Recon" was struck well after the divestment, a Bungie rep confirmed to me. Despite their previous relationship, these are now two separate and significant companies working together. But the way the announcement played out (and I'm not in Tokyo, so I'm speaking broadly) didn't seem much different than how it would have gone if Microsoft still owned Bungie.

Of course, the big news will come when Bungie is finally ready to talk about the original IP it's developing that's still on the DL. Even if Microsoft's publishing it (which is likely, but not definite), I'd bet Bungie wants to play a big role in how that news comes out.

All that being said, my favorite news from Tokyo Game Show is that there's already a sequel coming to one of my favorite games of the year. I'm not sure about the name "Desperate Struggle," but a new "No More Heroes?" Hellz yea.