Halo - Macworld Unveiling

Bungie · 355.1K views · 2009-07-21 · 3:39

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Overview

Footage of Bungie's Jason Jones revealing Halo to the public at Macworld on July 21, 1999. It shows the early third-person version of the game.

On Hacker News

Cited as a historical reference that Halo was first announced at Macworld, with Steve Jobs involved, and nearly launched as a Mac game.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2017–2025

Topics

Game history & retro gaming Tech company stories & documentaries

What people said

alexjplant · 2025-10 · Reference
> firing game devs by the thousands as they hand halo over to PlayStation They kind of took it from Apple to begin with. We almost had Halo on the iMac before Microsoft acquired Bungie [1]. [1] [VIDEO]
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jacobsimon · 2023-12 · Reference
Believe it or not - it was actually meant to be an exclusive for Mac before Microsoft acquired it. Here’s Steve Jobs kicking off the demo in 1999: [VIDEO]
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015a · 2022-01 · Reference
First of all; the original acquisition is not what I was referring to, but rather: Microsoft's "maintenance" of the Halo IP after Bungie itself left Microsoft's domain, and the formation of a near-entirely new studio (343) to develop it. Ok, they didn't buy the IP at that juncture; they bought a studio to develop an IP they already owned. Use some creativity and you can see the parallels are similar enough. Second: Do you recall the keynote where Bungie unveiled Halo for the first time... at MacWorld 1999? For reference, Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000. I've literally never heard the assertion that Halo was intended to be an RTS; my understanding is that it was originally going to be a third person FPS, as the 1999 MacWorld trailer suggests, but was changed to a first person FPS when Microsoft purchased them. [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Bungie, played through YouTube.

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