 For it's a motorsport, Gears of War, Halo, Microsoft's hits helped the company sell over 80 million Xbox 360s. But then the Xbox One had a pretty terrible launch. So Microsoft is betting its future on the biggest hits of its past. Let's see how they're doing it. So how do you get people to embrace Gears of War? You hire someone who has been with the game from the beginning and knows and loves the franchise more than anyone else to set the standards and give fans what they want. If this is it, if this is the apex of my career, I'm totally fine with that. Because Gears of War has been amazing to me and I love that franchise. I get to work on my favorite franchise, not only my favorite franchise to build, but my favorite franchise to play. That's why I went and got the tattoo. I'm okay being Gears Viking. And if that's what I'm known for for the rest of my life and then when I die, they go, like there's some notion about all that's on my thing is the, you know, helped create Gears of War. I'm totally happy with that. In 2014, Microsoft acquired the Gears of War franchise rights and tapped a small studio previously built to create new properties for Microsoft. The company rebranded as the Coalition and now is focused entirely on Gears. I always talk about managing sort of the betrayal of expectations, right? Because if you don't betray their expectations at all and you give them everything they think they want, then they go like, I've seen this before. I already have this game. Why do I want to play the new one? It's exactly the same thing. If you betray their expectations too far and you create a completely different experience, people kind of reject it and go like, it's so different. It's not even Gears anymore and I don't want it. That's not the game I wanted. This fall, the Coalition released a remastered version of the original Gears of War, but its big drop comes next year when the team will ship its first new Gears of War game. This one, we're assured, won't just be fan service. So part of what you have to do is as you plan through sort of the next evolution of your game is you have to look at managing that betrayal of expectations and go, okay, I'm going to betray them here and I'm going to betray them there. And what you hope are those betrayals actually become delight and surprise. Over at Turn 10, designers have been releasing Forza games since 2005, making it the oldest and most established of the three studios, and it shows. We want to change gaming culture. We want to change car culture and move those into the future of the next 10 years. Over the last 10 years, we've seen cars go from something we licensed to being something where we can be there at the debut of the most important car that Ford is going to debut in the next 20 years. And we were there at its debut. That wouldn't have happened 10 years ago and it's not because of us. It's not because of Xbox, it's not Microsoft, it's not Forza. It's because of gamers. It's because gamers have become more important. Turn 10 embraces iteration, believing regular updates, additions, and revisions benefit the fans. The stability allows its leaders to think not just about the next game, but far down the line. That's what are we changing in car culture and pop culture. How do we want to ignite car passion in a younger generation that don't look at cars the same way that we do. My kids, most kids are growing up with screens, not one. You know, an iPad, a laptop, a phone. I mean, just lots and lots of screens and games are part of their everyday life. That's the power of gaming. I think the car industry has a leg down. The car industry is selling cars. That's really hard to get a 12-year-old engaged with a car unless it's in a game. And once Turn 10 gets that 12-year-old fan hooked, it works to meet her expectations time and again. We do this for our fans. I mean, if they weren't here, we wouldn't be here, right? You know, so we definitely listen to them. We survey them. We research with them. We bring them in and play test with them. We never stop. We don't burn out, but we never stop. And so there's car production always going. There's game design always going. There is work always going on here. Forza is at its best when it's closest to reality. But in a fictitious game like Halo, success can be more subjective. Gamers, I think, even more than movie fans, are fussy and they want exactly what they want. But one of the first things to emerge from the launch of Halo 2 was Halo2Sucks.com, where they were just complaining about all the things that we destroyed and ruined. And meanwhile, you know, millions of people were loving it. And Halo 2 is sort of fondly thought of and widely beloved more than I think most Halo games. And so when you make these little changes, it may be small to me, but it can be super meaningful to a lot of people. Halo is Microsoft's most iconic franchise, to a fault. More than any Xbox game, Halo fans have ideas about what makes Halo great. Let's say you went to see U2 in concert, right? You definitely want to hear a couple of their big hits. I mean, that's what you paid for, right? You want to hear the new album because that's what they're promoting. But you also need to be satisfied that you get the original hits. And I think that's fine. But there's nothing wrong with that. Like, if you go to your favorite restaurant, it's probably because there's a few dishes in there that you absolutely love. And there's nothing wrong with criticizing it either. That kind of criticism makes us think about, well, what is the value of the tank? What could we do to make it better? And so as long as it's thoughtful criticism, basically any criticism is valid. It's amazing to have such a passionate community. It's really intense. And I think for us, what we focus on is how do we sort of distill down to the things that are important for Halo from a gameplay, from a story, from a sort of brand perspective, and stay true to those things knowing that we're going to experiment and we're going to try some different things. In order to appeal to a broad fan base, 343 Industries is expanding the Halo universe with everything from spin-off television programs to companion books to experimenting with other, sometimes stranger ideas. I look at the universe as our most important character. And so I think when you look at the books, you can only tell so much story in an FPS. And so when you look at the books, the comic books, the live action, it basically just enables us to really broaden the canvas. And how do we make the universe richer so that when we want to, we can pick up different stories. Microsoft has invested millions of dollars in these three big franchises, hoping they will attract gamers to Xbox One. But what if they don't? Microsoft has a backup plan. Spin-offs and remakes are expanding into the world of Windows 10. Halo has its own mobile games. The new Gears of War Ultimate Edition is coming to PC, and Windows 10 owners can stream Forza and the rest of their Xbox One to their home computer. For the past decade, the biggest franchises were the reason to buy into Xbox. For the next decade, don't be surprised if Marcus Fenix and Master Chief are the best reason to run Windows 10.