Microsoft: "Nothing Is Bigger Than Halo" In Terms Of Platform Exclusives

Author:: Matt Gardner
Category:: News
Tags:: 343 Industries, Halo 4, Microsoft, Steve Beinner, Xbox 360 games

Steve Beinner, Xbox director for global marketing, has suggested that the return of Master Chief will see the Halo franchise return to the top of the pile, competing with the biggest games around, such as GTA and Call of Duty.

“Bringing Master Chief back is huge,” states Beinner. “Honestly, there’s not many franchises that have done what Halo has. There’s not many that have broken through and sold that much. You named two of them, GTA and Call of Duty.

"But if you look at platform exclusives, nothing is bigger than Halo.”

Mario might have something to say about that, but the point remains that Halo has proven to be Microsoft's most enduring, and most profitable, platform exclusive series, with the Master Chief becoming an icon synonymous with the Xbox brand.

“Halo has missed Master Chief a little bit," added Halo 4 producer Kiki Wolfkill. "And that’s not to take anything away from the games that were off the main line. But we’ve built so much equity in Chief and really such a strong icon in Chief, that I do think people missed a little bit not being able to see what he was doing next. He is such a strong focal point.” [MCV]

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Halo 1 2 and 3 were great... Halo Wars was pretty fun, but ODST and Reach arround were just lame.

They need to up their game and not just run off the Halo name or it will go the way of Call of Duty where people start to hate the lack of effort put in and will walk.

Talking Microsoft and platform exclusives though.... that's it. Halo. The rest are just meh.

Bungie and Microsoft did not make as much of the Halo franchise as they could have. They've been "running off the Halo" name ever since Halo 2.

Halo 1 was innovative and awesome.

Halo 2 was misguided. Nobody cared about the Arbiter. I spent most of the time wishing I was playing as Master Chief, with Cortana to help me. However the multi-player in Halo 2 was perfect, and helped shape modern multi-player FPS gaming (e.g. matchmaking, parties etc.).

Halo 3 and Reach were too long in development and were not technically impressive, compared to other games. The game of Reach was nowhere near as good as the book, the "Fall of Reach". I think Bungie didn't want to pay any royalties to the author, so they had to make up their own version of the story.

Talking Microsoft and platform exclusives though.... that's it. Halo. The rest are just meh.

Forza is pretty awesome. Gears of War single-player is fairly meh but the multi-player is very fun (in GoW 3, at least).

Last edited by hurrakan, Mar. 12, 2012 at 17:07

I personally don't rate Forza, but then I dont like PGR or even GT, so I am not best to judge on that.

Gears of War is also on PC. Argueably that is MS as well, but I wouldn't call it exclusive. Thinking about it Halo 1 and 2 were on PC too so I wouldnt consider the Halo universe exclusive... though I do wish they would make Halo 3 for PC.

Viva Pinata anyone? Or how about Too Human?

1 out of 3 games in a franchise hardly matters though, that's like me saying MGS2 was on the Xbox so MGS isn't an exclusive franchise. It still largely is (and MGS4 still is) but like I said it's not really worth mentioning if you can start but then not see the middle or end.

I think it's sad the 360 lost so many exclusives to companies desperate for more money (just seems like they stick with sony but betray MS) but other than the titles you mentioned Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon and Tales of Vesperia are at least worthy titles. Crackdown is said to be good but I never got into it and then slowly MS slipped and let everything from Fable to Alan Wake go on PC. Sad.

As for your previous Halo comment, don't see how anyone could even compare Halo 3 and Halo reach. Reach went off in it's own story which was effective and good enough for what it was (simply meant to be a little emotional story) and it was definitely a let down for anyone expecting the kind of detail and depth of the book but overall it was still as good as Halo 1 and 2 in my opinion and I'd rate it highly whereas I put Halo 3 and ODST as the lowest.

Last edited by Sigiol, Mar. 12, 2012 at 23:21

I really liked ODST, it was a different direction. Reach was good but was very short even shorter than 3 it seemed. I do agree that the franchise stagnated a bit but i don't like when developers wipe their a$$es all over IP for innovations sake.

I also didn't care for the arbiter sections in Halo2 much at the time, but they were telling a story and it was a much more preferable mechanism for such than sitting through hours of cut scenes and it did add another dimension to the game. Halo 2 blew me away when I first played it. But I don't think a game since Halo has had as big an impact on me as that did. It was PERFECT. The single player was immense, the grand scale outdoor battles, the array of weapons, the cinematic nature without the scripted corridor shooter feeling that later cinematic titles have sandwiched FPSs into.

Then there was the link up multiplayer. I was at uni and we had a XBOX lan running through the house which was like nothing else at the time. the sniper battles, huge maps, up to 16 players. Good times. No, GREAT times.

The single player campaign of gears3 as an aside was a joke, it was easy and VERY short.

The only PS exclusives I'm a fan of anymore are the God Of War games. I stopped playing killzone 2 halfway through didnt bother with 3. I dont like the zak daxter etc churned out naughty dog platformers. I used to love platformers they were my fave genre for quite a while.

I played uncharted for a bit it failed to excite me so I stopped. Wipe-out hasn't been anygood since 2097 or 64. Don't get me started on heavy rain either....yeurgh.

Sorry got off topic a bit. I'll go do some work...

Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Tales of Vesperia and Crackdown... did not like any of them. LO was OK, but only OK, hardly on the scale of Halo.

Stuff going to PC is great! PC gaming is for proper hardcore gamers. None of this 30FPS and low graphics rubbish. 120FPS and 32x AA. Don't get me wrong, consoles are great and have their place for social gaming and I have all of them... but if I have a choise then it is PC every time.

Alan Wake was a great example at how good PC gaming is at the moment. The devs decided not to release on PC... then changed their mind. Spent time and money developing and marketing it for PC and made their money back in the first 2 days of a non-global release.

But in terms of exclusivity, you wont get that with a PC. Anyone who wants to write and release a PC game can. If you want to release for Xbox or PS3 then you have to pay MS or Sony.

If you look at the two consoles (PS3 and 360) and compare the ammount and quality of stuff that is exclusive (or was), then with the exception of Halo, MS are well behind Sony. And Halo is not what it once was.

Last edited by DivideByZero, Mar. 13, 2012 at 12:55

yeah WASD FTW

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