Unless you have been on a desert island for a while you have probably heard that Microsoft has a video game called Halo 3 that was recently released. It has been all over the news lately as journalists, gamers and the entire video game industry are raving about it in a high profile manner. Some are even calling it the biggest event in entertainment history.

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Even if you have no interest at all in video games, chances are you have heard about this one. Just about every television news show and news oriented website on the Internet has run some kind of story recently about the September 25, 2007 release of Halo 3, which makes it kind of hard to not know anything about this new video game.

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The Halo video game franchise is a very successful one and it has a rather significant following behind it. Serious video game enthusiasts consider it to be the best first person shooter game of all time. The fans of this game are members of what is called the Halo Nation and they are as devoted as any Trekkies or Star Wars fans. Many of them waited in long lines outside retail stores that sell video games in hopes of being the first one in their inner circle of gamer friends to buy and play Halo 3.

Some retail stores like the Best Buy store in New York City and EB Games in Los Angeles held special events at the stroke of midnight on September 25 to sell Halo 3 to eager customers who literally did not want to wait any longer than they had to in order to get their hands on this popular video game. With eager fans like these beating down the doors of their local stores to purchase Halo 3, Microsoft reportedly made 150 million dollars in the first 2 days of sales.

Bungie Studios, which is a division of Microsoft released the first of the Halo video games, Combat Evolved in 2001 and the franchise has been a hit ever since. Numerous other products have been created around this video game including a few more video games, a variety of action figures and five novels. It has become quite a cultural phenomenon in the world of entertainment.

Halo 2 was released on November 9, 2004 and by February, 2005 more than 9 million video games had been sold. Halo 2 shattered records for sales of video games up to that time. Halo 3 is expected to break those records relatively quickly.

Microsoft is expected to make about 560 million dollars from the sales of Halo 3 video games with a 90 percent profit margin. They will also sell millions of Halo 3 versions of their Xbox 360 video game consoles that are already on the market. Millions of dollars will also be made from online live video game versions and there will be a lot of money made from action figures and other trinkets.

The Halo series is based around a futuristic setting in which humans battle aliens across the galaxies with sophisticated weaponry. The main character is named Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117 and the name Halo refers to a large, round structure. Master Chief is clad in futuristic body armor and he is armed to the teeth with technology and weapons. He is fully equipped to do battle with aliens.

Microsoft has spent about 55 million dollars so far on Halo 3. About 25 million of that was spent on development. A dream team of computer programmers and artists numbering in the hundreds was assembled for the making of this project. They worked full time for over 3 years to create what some are calling a truly amazing interactive video game experience. The top level employees of this team are expected to be paid 20 million more in bonuses. The rest of the budget is being spent on marketing and promoting this highly anticipated Xbox 360 video game.

While Microsoft will be spending 15-20 million dollars on television marketing, this is a paltry sum for the amount of promotion they will be getting overall. Big corporations like Burger King, Pepsi and Pontaic will be footing the bill for the rest of the publicity as they hitch their products to this giant among video games.

Last year at this time it was Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3 and PSP by Sony that were getting all the media attention. Right now it is Microsoft and Xbox 360 games that are in the publicity spotlight. The recent release of the video game Halo 3 along with products like video game consoles for Xbox 360 with the Halo 3 name on it will undoubtedly put them back on top of the video game industry once again.

Halo 3 Video Game Hits The Ground Running

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