Halo Legends: A Failure In Marketing?

As you may know, Halo Legends, an anthology of seven animated stories based upon the Halo universe was released last week. To say that Halo is big is an understatement of the highest degree, the Halo brand is a force of nature. If a Halo game is coming out then you can be sure that game will be one of, if not THE best-selling game of that year. And so you can understand that when I entered my local HMV (for those in the US it’s a chain music store much like Best Buy), which happens to be the only place that to my knowledge sells anime in Belfast, I was fully expecting, in the game section at least, to be confronted by a wall of Halo Legends advertising. I was sorely wrong. There was not a single copy in the gaming section, so maybe I was expecting too much and then I went to the anime section upstairs, there was at least two copies just mixed in with the rest of the stuff. No posters, no cardboard cut outs of the Master Chief and no guy in a chicken suit with a giant arrow saying “Get your Halo here!”.

Whilst I am no fan of Halo by any means, I believe that this truly is negligence, and I don’t think that this is on the part of HMV though, why? Well when you compare this to the Dante’s Inferno animated anthology, it was right in front of you as soon as you entered the door, whereas to find Halo you have to go to the corner of the 2nd floor (third floor in US terms). Also another thing is that the game stores, another obvious place to put a piece of game related merchandise didn’t have a single copy between them which really strikes you as idiotic.

How good Halo Legends is may be in doubt but if slapping the Halo name on a RTS of somewhat questionable quality will make it sell over 1 million units in the first month and a bit of its release, then there is no doubt at all that it would sell like hotcakes if it was marketed properly. But unfortunately it appears that it isn’t being handled properly, and it isn’t that the people who are releasing it don’t know how to do marketing as it being released by Warner Bros one of the biggest companies in Hollywood.

Why does this concern me? Well as I said, I’m not a Halo fan and never have been. However, I feel that with the Halo name behind it, it could become one of those huge sellers like Final Fantasy or the Animatrix and possibly even one of those fabled “gateway drugs” that cone once every blue moon. And it is one of these “gateway drugs” that is really needed at the moment in order to inject new blood into fandom and help the industry to recover.