According to CEO Pete Parsons, Bungie has been working on several new games for three years. He mentioned the studio's upcoming games and its split with Activision in a wide-ranging interview with Metro.Asked about Bungie's January 2019 split with publisher Activision, Parsons said that while the attention-grabbing and seemingly friendly, he said the studio's consistent desire is "creative independence." While that obviously means control over "Destiny 2," Parsons began talking about future Bungie games.

It is not a big surprise that the studio has other projects in the works: in 2018, it filed a video game software trademark for "Matter" in the EU; in 2019, Bungie plans to release a game other than "Destiny" at some point before 2025 The company also had plans to release a game other than "Destiny" at some point before 2025. This year, the company listed a job opening to work on "something light and whimsical." Christopher Barrett is also currently listed as game director for an unannounced project.

"So about three years ago, Jason (Jones), Johnny Ebert, Zach Russell, and a few others started working on a new incubation," Parsons said. That was in 2017, just before Bungie decided to receive a huge infusion of funding from NetEase in 2018 and shortly after that split from Activision. Parsons also said that M.E. Chung, the designer of Destiny's social systems, was working on an incubation project.

Parsons said that the incubation process was more about building an excellent team than about completing a publishable game, but he also seemed pleased with how the game turned out. In fact, ironically, we expected the incubation failure rate to be quite high, but these incubations are really great because we have been able to not only continue the Destiny universe, but also build a deep bench of talent."

Supporting these incubation game projects is clearly a major priority for Bungie. Parsons noted that despite the pandemic, the developer is hiring new employees "faster than we thought"; Bungie has transitioned its entire studio to indefinite telecommuting since March, with the exception of some key IT operations and security personnel. Parsons said, "Almost a quarter of the people who work at Bungie today have never set foot in the studio. It breaks my heart, but at the same time it is a testament to the work that each team has accomplished.

Parsons would not elaborate on how many of these employees are involved in future games, but said, "I think you guys will be pretty excited. I wish I could say more, but I think you'll be pretty excited."