Apple boss furious at MS Bungie buy-out

Microsoft's purchase of Bungie back in 2000 made Steve Jobs so angry that a special deal had to be brokered to appease the aggrieved Apple despot.

Former Microsoft exec Ed Fries told Develop, "As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called. He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we'd just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer."

Prior to jumping ship to Microsoft and making Halo, Bungie had developed a number of successful games for the Mac, including the Marathon series.

"So, during the day, I got an email from Steve Ballmer asking me to phone Steve Jobs and calm him down about the whole thing," Fries continued.

"Anyway, we did this deal with Apple where we'd port some PC games to the Macintosh and help Peter Tamte create this company to do it, and I had to go to a Mac developer conference and get on stage and talk about this whole new partnership. It was a pretty strange time."

Gulp. Next time you bump into Jobs in the pub, be sure not to spill his pint, won't you?

Ed Fries left his role as Microsoft's vice president of game publishing in 2004 to set up 3D modeling studio Finger Prints. Jobs, on the other hand, is gearing up for another Apple gaming offensive with the imminent launch of an App Store for the Mac.