Halo

Halo was announced in 1999 as a strategy game for the Macintosh, on stage, by Steve Jobs. Microsoft bought Bungie the following year, turned the project into a first-person shooter and shipped it with the first Xbox. It is the reason shooters work on a controller at all.

From a Mac strategy game to an Xbox launch title

Bungie showed Halo at Macworld in July 1999 as a third-person strategy game. Microsoft acquired the studio in June 2000 and needed a game to sell a console nobody had asked for.

The Xbox was Microsoft's first console, sold at a loss into a market Sony had held for six years. Halo: Combat Evolved came out in November 2001 alongside it. Aiming with a thumbstick had never worked well, so Bungie rebuilt the genre around the limitation instead of fighting it.

Two weapons at a time, a recharging shield that removes the health-pack hunt, grenades on a shoulder button, and a slight aim assist. Console shooters have used that arrangement ever since.

Halo 2 builds the machinery of online console play

Halo 2 arrived in 2004 with automatic matchmaking on Xbox Live, which meant a player could find opponents of a similar level without arranging anything. Console multiplayer had been a local affair until then.

Halo 3 took 170 million dollars on its first day in 2007. Halo 3: ODST in 2009 and Halo: Reach in 2010 closed Bungie's run.

Bungie left Microsoft in 2007. Microsoft created 343 Industries specifically to keep the series going, and it took over with Halo 4 in 2012.

A campaign the press liked and a multiplayer that arrived empty

Halo 5: Guardians scored well in 2015 while dividing players over a story that keeps the main character offscreen for most of it.

Halo Infinite in 2021 reversed the pattern. Its campaign was received as the best in a decade, its free multiplayer drew a large audience, and then content arrived so slowly that the audience left before the promised modes did.

The series has now spent longer under 343 Industries than it did under Bungie, and that comparison follows every release.

What a controller made necessary

The recharging shield spread everywhere, including to games with no science fiction in them: Call of Duty adopted regenerating health in 2007 and the mechanic became standard.

Halo also proved a console could carry a shooter with a written universe behind it, with novels, comics and eventually a television adaptation.

The franchise has sold more than 81 million games and carries a written universe of novels and comics, which is unusual for a series that began as a launch requirement.

The design constraint was a thumbstick. The answer to it is now the default grammar of an entire genre.