I think I'm finally starting to wrap my head around all this marketing overload. I remember when the first Mac came out and folks all of sudden could use these new thingies called 'fonts' real easy, and if you also had a laserwriter you could do what no one else could do with their dot matrix - silky smooth black text on a clear white page. So what did we see when it all first made a splash? Everyone and their mother made posters using *every* single font available - the most atrocious page design graced every bulletin board in main street, USA. Though I would normally use this as an analogy for map makers that take glee in a master chief that shoots flood-elites out of a needler or similar, in this case I'd apply it to marketers that see the juggernaut that is Halo 3 and want to latch everything AND the kitchen sink to it.

I find Halo slurpees, pontiacs, burger king, etc., pointless, I have no interest in them. What *does* psych me up though is that the atmosphere exists where they are shamelessly doing this, and that truly in the end it IS Halo that is doing all the selling. Is it too late to declare that Bungie has done an admirable job of tapping into our pop-culture zeitgeist?

I think also - look at these two ads really really hard and I think you'll see that MS - or more appropriately Bungie - is doing something - there is a big message here. Much like Neil Gaiman's Sandman run, I'm starting to see things come to a culmination. I don't mean that in the sense of worried fans that MC is gonna die or the like, or some kind of giant explosive ending, but more in the 'bigger picture' of how everything, and I mean *everything* - all previous games, and the novels, and these commercials are wrapping up to a particular meme that Bungie is very aware of and WANTS to give us as a present. Dare I say it, it's like I'm falling in love with them all over again.

- M

The Halo name sells itself to us hardcore gamer geeks. (And not all of us, even excluding the "Sony" Defense Force.) Microsoft marketing is trying to extend that reach, though, and hook people outside that comfortable niche. Broadening the market for Halo games (and 360s) is very much in their interests if they're going to make inroads on the Nintendo front. Besides, if they want Halo 3 to exceed Halo 2's sales marks they're going to have to move more consoles... and the only way to do that is to promote Halo 3 into a serious system seller the way Wii Sports was.

And, of course, the bigger splash Halo 3 makes the more likely it is that some studio bigwig will finally get a rectal craniectomy and put a Halo movie back into production. So even though I find the tie-in spree a bit on the gaudy side, in the end I'm for it.

-- Steve's enjoyed movies with even gaudier displays, so it approaching this from the perspective of games finally getting the same treatment as movies.