Halo 3

The launch of the long anticipated game Halo 3 was a huge marketed event and still has events that will revolve around the massive success of the final chapter in the Halo series. While this is not in-game advertising directly is it still game marketing and advertising with the potential to be in-game advertsing. The launch of Halo 3 drew sponsors like Mountain Dew, Microsoft, and Comcast cable to help promote the launch. In the first week there were $300 million in sales and 40 million hours spent on Xbox Live in just the first week. In-game advertising could be tied into Xbox Live even though it is a subscription service ads could reduce their cost. Massive game launches like this one usually draw sponsors for events as well as the potential for in-game ads. Bungie included the ability to record videos during game play according to Shankar Gupta says that this is a huge opportunity for Machinima creators. Machinima is when videos or movies are created in games. This creates many marketing possibilities because of how easy it is to create and distribute movies especially online. Machinima movies also have the potential to draw corporate sponsorship in order to facilitate a better movie. The Red vs Blue series from Halo 2 was very popular with online viewers. Advertisers could get ads in these movies or sponsor them as a guerilla marketing tactic that would be actually rather cost effective.