Halo 2, out in 2004, turbocharged the popularity of Microsoft s then two-year-old online service.
Halo 2 was leaked onto the Internet in October 2004, a month before its release.
FORBES: 'Halo: Reach' Leaked On Internet 3 Weeks Prior To Release
Last year Madden was up against Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Microsoft's Halo 2.
Blue is a wildly popular "machinima" video series created by manipulating characters inside Microsoft's videogame Halo 2.
Windows 7 and 8 can handle directx11 so it makes sense if a game is limited to those 2 operating systems but Halo 2 was nothing like that.
In any case, the iPod shuffle has proved the product's vaunted "halo effect" in that, when Apple introduced its new iPod in January, everybody stopped talking about how many copies of Halo 2 Microsoft shipped during December.
ENGADGET: Switched On: Motorola will play shuffle-bored on deck
Those were bigger honors than big budget blockbusters like Halo 4 and Borderlands 2 received (each took home a pair of vector monkeys).
Black Ops 2 and Halo 4, the latter an Xbox Exclusive and the former mostly played on Xbox, had a lot to do with the still-impressive Xbox sales.
FORBES: Microsoft's 7-Year Old Xbox 360 Puts up Impressive Black Friday Numbers
Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 are the biggest games of the year.
FORBES: 'Halo 4' Won't Make Your Kids Violent: Why Parents Should Play Video Games With Their Kids
Next year should also see the release of the company's so-called "Halo-killer": a game called Killzone 2.
That means it will avoid competing directly with big-budget first-person shooter rivals, including Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
BBC: Bioshock Infinite delayed until 2013 by Irrational Games
Black Ops 2 launched one week after the release of Halo 4.
FORBES: 'Black Ops 2' Tops 11M Units Sold In First Week, No Signs Of Call Of Duty Fatigue Yet
There are many ways it can be done right, including the Spartan Ops DLC in the recently released Halo 4, the new content in Dark Souls, or the Captain Scarlett DLC for Borderlands 2.
FORBES: Why Day-One DLC Isn't Just Bad For Gamers, It's Bad For Business
Few games carve out a space the way Half-Life 2 or BioShock did, or inspire me to actually finish playing the way the first Halo inspired.
FORBES: Sands Of Darkness: The Good, The Bad, And Ugly Of 'Spec Ops: The Line' (PC)
The first time I played Halo felt a little bit like the first time I played DOOM or the first time I played Half-Life 2.
FORBES: 'Halo 4' And The Impossible Quest For Novelty And Wonder
应用推荐