Halo and Master Chief’s co-creator Marcus Lehto recently went into detail about the series’ earliest days, and has even spilled the tea on how Microsoft wrangled the game out of competitor Apple’s hands.
Before Halo became the killer app for Microsoft’s Xbox console, it was actually supposed to be a third-person shooter for Apple’s Macs. CEO and company founder Steve Jobs even introduced the game to the world on stage during 1999’s Macworld Conference, which still had an epic theme tune and aliens but was otherwise very different to the Halo we know now.
“We got up on stage with Steve Jobs at Macworld and we talked about it there,” Lehto remembered in an interview with Kent State Magazine, the college he once attended.
Looking for studios and exclusives to bulk up its Xbox launch slate, Microsoft eventually called the studio, which was at that point in a spiky financial situation. “And then Microsoft said, ‘Steve Jobs can’t have that. We’re going to buy you and move you all to the Pacific Northwest, and then we’re going to have you build this game for the Xbox.'”
I’m guessing that was creative, incomplete paraphrasing on Lehto’s part, but imagining Bill Gates and Steve Jobs embroiled in some kind of tech billionaire civil war over the rights to Halo does bring a smile to my face. The rest is history, though – Halo: Combat Evolved launched alongside the OG Xbox and the series has become synonymous with Microsoft’s consoles ever since.
Elsewhere in the interview, Lehto said that he actually redesigned Master Chief nine times before landing on the suit featured in Halo CE.
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