The franchise benefited from being exclusive to Microsoft consoles

Mar 13, 2012 22:31 GMT  ·  By

The executives at Microsoft working on the Halo franchise have stated that the return of Halo and Master Chief this fall means that the company has the biggest exclusive series in the history of gaming, which compares favorably with Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, which manage to compete because they are multiplatform.

Steve Beinner, who is the global marketing director at the Xbox division of Microsoft, told MCV that, “Bringing Master Chief back is huge. 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.”

Kiki Wolfkill, a producer working on Halo at the Microsoft Game Studios, added, “Halo has missed Master Chief a little bit. 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.”

At the moment the development of Halo is being handled by 343 Industries, a new studio that Halo created from old hands from Bungie and a number of new developers working on their first high-profile game project.

The company needs to deliver a video game that manages to appeal to the old fans of the series while also introducing innovations that challenge the traditional assumptions about the franchise.

Former Halo developer Bungie is now working on a new video game universe, which will be linked to a new series, to be published by Activision Blizzard.

Halo 4 will be launched exclusively on the Xbox 360 during the fall of this year.