It's beginning to sound like the name Ed Fries is one we might be hearing a lot more from now on. Ed is the Vice President of Microsoft's Games Group. We've learned that PC.IGN has conducted an interview with both Ed Fries and Alex Seropian, the CEO of Bungie Studios. During the interview, Ed explains what made the Bungie acquisition so important to Microsoft:

IGNPC: Let's talk about the acquisition process. What was behind the decision to bring Bungie into the company, instead of just publishing their titles in the future under the Microsoft franchise, like you're doing with Relic?EF: That's a complicated question about why that works best some times. In this case, Bungie has three incredibly talented development teams. The opportunity to take them and put them very close to the development for Xbox is great, so that the Xbox team can benefit from working very closely with them, and likewise we can get the benefit from building the console and the games at the same time. It's that whole opportunity. We're going to be announcing over the next month all sorts of publishing deals we're doing with people. But that's not really the same as having a group that's right here, that's working every day across the hall from the people building the Xbox.

So far the word is that Microsoft is making good on the plan for a hands-off approach to acquiring Bungie. This ought to help quell some of the fears expressed by members of our community, along with the information posted by Bungie employees in the public chats that if for some reason anyone at Bungie becomes uncomfortable with the situation he or she has the freedom to walk out. I'd say the fact that Bungie is going into this deal voluntarily is a good thing.