Halo
2000's Era Game
Class of 2017 Inductee
Halo is a military science fiction video game series and media franchise, originally developed by Bungie and currently managed and developed by Halo Studios (previously 343 Industries), part of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios.
The series launched in November 2001 with the first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved and its tie-in novel, The Fall of Reach.
The latest major installment, Halo Infinite, was released in 2021. Spinoffs include real-time strategy and twin-stick shooter games.
Wikipedia Link:
Legacy
Sales of games in the Halo series were more than 81 million by 2021.
Total franchise sales were reported at $6 billion the same year.
Non-game merchandise grosses accounted for $1.8 billion of that figure.
Many of the Halo novels have appeared on Publishers Weekly, USA Today and The New York Times bestsellers lists, and multiple Halo soundtracks have charted on the Billboard 200.
Halo redefined first-person shooters on consoles and was a major component in the Xbox’s early success, serving as the console’s killer app.
In a retrospective of Halo 2, journalist Anthony John Agnello described the game’s impact as akin to the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs, remaking the gaming landscape and creating the modern conception of games as shared social experiences.
In 2007 IGN listed Combat Evolved as the top Xbox game of all time, while readers ranked it the fourteenth best game ever on “IGN Readers’ Choice 2006 – The Top 100 Games Ever”.
IGN listed Halo 2 as the number two top Xbox game of all time in March 2007.
Halo 3 was nominated for and won multiple awards; it won Time magazine’s “Game of the Year” and IGN chose it as the Best Xbox 360 Online Multiplayer Game and Innovative Design of 2007.
eSports:
Microsoft and 343 Industries sponsored their own professional Halo league, called the Halo Championship Series (HCS), in 2014.
It was started in partnership with the Electronic Sports League (ESL).
Seasons 1 and 2 ran on The Master Chief Collection.
In August 2015 Microsoft announced it would be increasing the total prize pool of the HCS to US$1 million, for the newly announced Halo World Championship, which will be the debut event for Halo 5.
Crowd-funding contributed to a US$2.5 million prize pool, the largest console esports prize pool ever.
International Video Game Hall of Fame Class of 2017 Induction Speech:
