A few months ago, it was revealed that Peter Jackson was done with Halo. Following a rumor that Steven Spielberg was interested in attaching himself to the project, Microsoft later confirmed that a movie based on their blockbuster franchise had officially been "put on hold."
So where does the Halo movie stand now? There's not much new to reveal, but Microsoft certainly understands the value of the IP and seems pretty open to kickstarting the movie at some point. Speaking to Joystiq, Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer commented, "The Halo movie, you know, it could [come back into play]. I think about Halo as something that's very important to us and something that we wouldn't want to jeopardize the quality of the IP by getting into a space where we didn't have shared goals with the partner and that the timing worked."
He continued, "There's so many variables when you take two different creative industries and try to come up with the right property, the right shipping product at the right time, and make sure both people have enough time to focus on the quality. It's just a delicate balance. And I don't want to get into a situation where we're not completely comfortable with what we're going to ship."
Spencer was also asked about whether Microsoft is concerned with saturating the market with too much Halo, much like Eidos did in years past with Tomb Raider. After all, within a relatively short period there's Halo Wars, ODST, Halo Reach and Halo Legends (the anime). As long as quality stays high, however, Spencer doesn't foresee a problem with the franchise.
"You have to make sure that when you're going to do something, with any of our first-party franchises or new IP -- our quality rating over the last three or four years is as high as any publisher in the industry. I've always been very proud of that because I know, well, reviews aren't always what the customer voice is. It is a metric and it's nice to see and, specifically with something like Halo, you have to make sure that when you're shipping something, when you're coming up with a new idea, there's a reason it exists. You understand the first-party goals that we have especially with Halo, which does things like define Live for many of us and matchmaking, how that worked," he said. "And that's how we'll continue to work with the franchise going forward. We have 343 Industries now internally, which is really focused on the complete Halo experience. We still continue to work with Bungie to create great games. Halo's in a very good spot right now."
The rest of the interview focused on Project Natal, its future impact, and expanding the audience for games. Microsoft is startng to sound an awful lot like Nintendo here. For example check out this quote from Spencer: "I think the opportunity for us as an industry for both first and first party, is how do we make the overall audience bigger? How do we make it larger? Today, the controllers are barriers to some people. We know that. People who didn't grow up gaming, they look at this thing with all these buttons, and sticks, and controls, triggers and it's not a natural device for them."
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