Microsoft bets big that multibillion-dollar game series Halo will thrive on television

LOS ANGELES — Microsoft believes that it can take its multibillion-dollar Halo video game series into Hollywood. It is doing so with two major video events — a digital feature from director Ridley Scott and a possible Showtime television series from Steven Spielberg.

The maker of the Xbox One believes the two shows will help sell its video game console and the Xbox Live entertainment service that sits atop it. If it succeeds, Halo could become a big money-maker on two different kinds of media for the publisher. Microsoft is disclosing more details about the shows at its press conference today at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) conference. From what Microsoft has said so far, it is experimenting with creating multiple points of entry for a single entertainment property. The TV shows and the games will influence each other and pull fans across the TV-game divide.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.