MS spends more on Reach than Halo 3

Forget Call of Duty or FIFA – Halo: Reach could be this year’s biggest video game.

And to help it along its way, Microsoft is putting more of its marketing spend behind Reach than it did for 2007’s Halo 3.

A huge mainstream marketing campaign will see the title promoted across TV, radio, print, events, websites and retailers – both before and after release.

Entertainment and devices director Stephen McGill told MCV: Halo: Reach is extremely important for us. Not just from a revenue and business perspective, but Halo is such an iconic franchise, and one that has delivered huge innovation with every release. It’s a game that’s extremely close to our hearts.

The marketing campaign for Halo: Reach sees a 60 per cent increase over what was spent on Halo 3.

But aside from spend, we’ve again seen some really innovative marketing execution around the game.”

TV advertising kicked off in April and will be followed up with a special two-minute ad on Channel 4 on the game’s September 14th release date.

Online promotions are running on Facebook, Twitter, www.rememberreach.com, and the Xbox Live Dashboard, with a free Halo: Reach theme available to all of Live’s 25m users next week.

A big launch event took place in London last night (Thursday, September 9th), with football star Rio Ferdinand making an appearance.

A wide range of POS material is available to retailers, including full window takeovers.

Retailers are absolutely getting behind this as this year’s biggest release,” added McGill.

The consensus is this is the biggest and best Halo game ever. We’re really confident it will deliver in terms of quality, and can’t wait to see where the Halo universe goes next.”