25th Anniversary of Xbox

[dyne]

https://www.windowscentral.com/gamin...celebrate-that

Recently, Microsoft conducted a new interview with License Global magazine, which revolved around the merchandising of Halo.

During the interview, Xbox head of consumer products John Friend revealed that Halo has raked in over $1.8 billion in consumer spending on merchandising and licensed products alone, excluding video games entirely.

Elsewhere in the piece, John Friend confirmed that Microsoft is planning some sort of 25th anniversary event for Xbox and Halo, which share a birthday.

Xbox's 25th anniversary would fall on November 15, 2026 — which would be an interesting time to launch a new console generation, no?

During the interview, Xbox head of consumer products John Friend discussed a variety of topics pertaining to licensing and merchandising, which Xbox has been fairly good at in recent years. They license out their games IP to other companies in some cases, such as the upcoming MechWarrior 5: Clans, while also diving deeper into licensed cross-media properties such as the Minecraft Movie, Fallout TV show, and Halo TV show (obviously with mixed success there, ahem.) In any case, Friend confirmed that Halo alone has seen $1.8 billion in non-gaming consumer spend. Microsoft has quite a prolific merchandising operation going on right now, when you consider the legendary Blizzard store, coupled with the Xbox merchandise shop and the Bethesda gear store too.

"We have these massive, fantastic franchises ranging from World of Warcraft –celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — to Halo, Call of Duty, to StarCraft and much more," Friend said. "We’re building plans for the 25th anniversary of Halo and Xbox — we have such a rich heritage and history, and these communities have been active for so long, you have to celebrate that."

I fully expect a console wallpaper and that'll be about it.