Is the Halo Franchise Becoming Something Else?

It's a well-known fact that successful video game franchises see movie adaptations, give birth to action figures and so on. They become an industry. It is the case with the Halo series. For example there's a Halo movie in order from Peter Jackson and Neil Blomkamp and some Halo mini-films. 1UP.com makes a very pertinent observation pointing out Peter Jackson's mystery collaboration with Bungie Studios and Peter Moore's comparing Halo to the Star Wars franchise: is Microsoft overstretching the Halo brand as an IP for the company?

No really, that's what they asked Microsoft's Shane Kim: "Do you feel you're overstretching the Halo IP? Where do you draw the line?"

Shane Kim replied: "If we were pimping this out and prostitute it, yeah, I would feel real bad. In general, everything we try to do with Halo is with high quality partners in a high quality way. People can criticize us for Halo2 Vista, that's fine, I know that's not our best execution. But, Halo 3's going to be great and Halo Wars is going to be fantastic. This is Ensemble Studios, so we didn't just schlep it out to somebody, a third tier developer. The Halo movie, if and when it gets done -- and I remain very interested in doing that, we're in conversations with our friends in Hollywood about the movie -- that's going to be a great thing, but we're only going to do it if it's a great movie and it's set up to be done in a high quality way. We're not going to get a movie done just for the sake of doing a movie.

The interviewer's following question, in regards to the same issue: "I was just going to say...if I come back next E3 and say you crossed that line! You told me you weren't going to do it!"

Kim: "No, that's crossing the line. Halo Wars I don't think is crossing the line, and that's all we've got going in the gaming space. Halo 1 PC and Halo 2 Vista, those were Halo first-person-shooters, we didn't really deviate from the core of what Halo is."

So although, from the outside it looks like the Halo series is turning into something else, Microsoft seems to have it all under control. However, who says Microsoft can't do anything with the franchise from now on. After all, Halo 3 ends the trilogy: "A trilogy is three", said Kim.