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Halo 'No Longer Just a Game' For Microsoft
News.com has a piece looking at the way that Halo has transformed from game to franchise for Microsoft and the Xbox. Despite the heavy advertising and branded products that seem to be everywhere in anticipation of next week's launch, the company is still trying to keep the IP as pure as possible. "Microsoft is wary of watering down Halo, meaning it would rather walk away from deals for Master Chief pajamas or Covenant sippy cups. Microsoft had little experience in talking to toymakers and others about how to transfer an onscreen experience to real objects. But such experts exist in the licensing arms of movie studios, so Microsoft partnered with 20th Century Fox to act as the main licensing agent for the Halo brand. Items that did not make the cut were a Halo-themed lottery ticket, lingerie modeled after a female hologram character, and toy guns based on the game's weapons. Instead, fans can expect high-quality action figures from McFarlane Toys, a tabletop game from WizKids, and replica weapons for mature buyers."
http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/07/06/halo-3-laser-tag-command-features-plasma-rifle-plasma-pistol-energy-sword-for-your-inner-master-chief.htm
WHY the HELL NOT?!?!?!
its a naval rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Chief_Petty_Officer
Just having a character named "Masterchief" always seemed like overkill to me.
Well, it was supposed to be Masterchef , but they couldn't get Steven Seagal to sign on, so they had to change it at the last minute.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I miss my Pac Man sheets. I wonder if anyone sells retro ones in Queen size these days.
Oh, never mind I share that bed with a female. Yes, I'm new here.
I hate Grammar Nazi's
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
Licensed bedsheets? The game is rated MA. Nothing says virgin quite like a 21 year old with Cortana plastered across your bed.
I've got to say, when I first started to see all the marketing crud they are doing for Halo 3 I thought it was pathetic. The "game fuel" thing really clenched it for me.
I think Ctrl+Alt+Del captured it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Well ... I haven't played any of the Halo series (not my cup of tea), but I always assumed that Master Chief was just the guys title. Similar to how you see the some characters referred to just by title in Books/Movies, I assumed that referring to this faceless character by title only was a plot device to help draw the player into the world, since the dialog would refer to someone/something they could be, instead of using a third parties name (that wasn't theirs).
In the "Real World" U.S. Navy & Coast Guard "Master Chief Petty Officer is the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank (E-9) in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, just above Senior Chief Petty Officer, and is a non-commissioned officer. They are referred to as Master Chief in most circumstances."
From the bottom of the same Wikipedia page: "In the Halo video game series, SPARTAN-117 (John), more commonly called the Master Chief, the protagonist of the series, holds the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer in the United Nations Space Command."
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Madness?! This is Sparta!
"replica weapons for mature buyers"
haha. yeah right, it's so mature and grown-up walking round with a plastic copy of a virtual weapon from a computer game
kudos to MS though, for not putting the brand on anything. the lingerie sounds plain tacky
It never confused me at all; I'm ex-Navy and it made perfect sense to make the main hero a Master Chief.
They are godlike characters, answerable to no one; they can not be busted in rank in any normal fashion, Officers fear them, enlisted both fear them and are protected by them.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Bungie's been doing that sort of story driven universe for a while. Halo shares a lot in common with the storyline that ran through the Marathon series, years ago when Bungie was a Mac only developer. I played the original marathon way back when, but never got around to the rest of the trilogy (I think it was a trilogy). But a few years ago I came across a website that basically listed all of the text from the game, almost as a screen play, and reading through it all was a reasonably entertaining story.
The Halo universe might not be 100% original, but it's got a lot of background and detail, and as such has a good bit of potential for future projects. A RTS game of some sort could certainly be interesting, or maybe one day an MMO that finds a way to combine individual soldier combat with large scale spaceship combat and all that. There's nothing insurmountable stopping anyone else from making games like that, but having a reasonably well known and already partially described universe to place the game in gives it more legitimacy and hopefully can give players a more immediate connection to a game.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.