With Halo Infinite, Microsoft Hopes to Rekindle Its Flagship Game
The New York Times
Though interest in Halo has waned over the years, the company is banking on a new version to goose sales of its Xbox and subscription gaming service.
When Microsoft released its first Xbox console 20 years ago, executives did not think that Halo, a new game set in a 26th-century galactic war pitting humans against alien invaders, would become the face of the tech giant’s gaming aspirations.
But players fell in love with Halo and its story line, featuring a soldier in green armor, known as Master Chief. Halo became synonymous with the Xbox brand, and since then the franchise has made $6 billion, sold more than 81 million copies of games and spawned an array of spinoffs, comic books and movies.
In recent years, however, the franchise has lost some of its cachet. A series of sequels have made plenty of money, but other games, like Call of Duty, have largely eclipsed Halo as cultural touchstones.
