Halo

Halo is a science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and owned and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The series centers on the interstellar war between humanity and a theocraticalliance of aliens known as the Covenant. The Covenant worship an ancient civilization known as the Forerunners, who perished in combat with the parasitical Flood. The main trilogy of games center on theexperiences of the Master Chief, John-117, a cybernetically-enhanced human super-soldier, and his artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana. In this setting, the term "Halo" refers to Halomegastructures: large, habitable ringed structures, similar to the Orbitals in Iain M Banks' Culture novels, or to smaller versions of Larry Niven's Ringworld.[1][2]

The series has been praised as beingamong the best first-person shooters on a video game console, and are considered the Microsoft Xbox's "killer app".[3] This has led to the term "Halo killer" being used to describe console games thataspire, or are considered, to be better than Halo.[4] Fueled by the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, and immense marketing campaigns from publisher Microsoft, its sequels went on to break various salesrecords. Halo 3 sold more than US$170 million worth of copies in the first twenty-four hours of release, breaking the record set by Halo 2 three years prior.[5][6] Halo: Reach, in turn, broke therecord set by Halo 3, selling $200 million USD worth of copies on its first day.[7]The games have sold over 34 million copies worldwide, and all Halo merchandise has grossed more than $1.7 billion.Strong sales of the games led to the franchise's expansion to other mediums; there are multiple bestselling novels, graphic novels, and other licensed products. Beyond the original trilogy, other "Halo"games have branched off into other video game genres, including Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game produced as developer Ensemble Studios' last project. Bungie also contributed the expansion Halo...