Bungie reveals what Bungie Aerospace is.

And… it’s not what I expected.

According to Bungie, Bungie Aerospace is a platform for mobile developers to partner up with Bungie to create and/or release mobile and social games. So it’s their publishing arm, to put it crudely.

From their press release:
Bungie has always been passionate about making and playing great games, regardless of platform, said Pete Parsons, Bungie COO. Bungie Aerospace will allow us to explore game creation in multiple formats with some amazingly talented teams. Now that we’ve returned to our roots as an independent studio, we are in a position to launch Bungie Aerospace to support, foster, and elevate like-minded, independent developers.

It’ll be interesting to see what games come out of this. First game is titled Crimson, and is being developed by Harebrained Schemes, which is headed by Jordan Weisman, the creative mind behind Halo 2’s I Love Bees Alternate Reality Game, FASA Interactive, Wizkids, the MechWarrior and Shadowrun universes, and dozens of other creations and companies. With credentials like that, it’ll be interesting to see what Crimson will be like.

Interestingly enough, however, is thatthe Bungie Aerospace site itself is still blank, which seems rather odd.

The announcement comes in the middle of Bungie’s 20th Anniversary celebration. In which they’re holding actions for charity, making the Third Marathon game open source, promoting Marathon 2 for the iPad, and lots of other things. All will culminate on July 7th(Bungie Day), where they’ll take to Halo Reach in a specially crafted “Bungie vs. The World” playlist. Teams who defeat Bungie by 20 or more points get’s a steak mailed to them. Unless you live overseas. In which case you get a gift card for something. Legalities suck, don’t they?

More info on Aerospace, Bungie, and the celebrations can be found on Bungie.net