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Curated playlist

Microsoft franchises

  • Call of DutyCall of Duty left World War II in 2007 and sales took off. Modern Warfare sold over 13 million copies by May 2009.
  • Fallout (franchise)In the Fallout franchise, the world ends in a two-hour nuclear exchange on the morning of the 23rd of October 2077, eastern daylight time. Everything in the series grows from the wreckage. Fallout is an American media franchise of…
  • Windows PhoneMicrosoft wrote off $7.6 billion on Nokia phone hardware in 2016, when Windows Phone held 1% of the market.
  • Halo (franchise)Halo is a military science fiction franchise, and in 1997 its earliest form went by a codename its own programmer was too embarrassed to say aloud. Bungie's team first called the project "Monkey Nuts." Jason Jones could not bring himself…
  • Fable (video game series)In the Fable games, your choices change the hero's face. Good and evil deeds show in the character's body.
  • Microsoft WindowsWindows 1.0 could not overlap windows at all. Everything sat tiled flat on the screen when it shipped in 1985.
  • Gears of WarGears of War begins its fiction with a death toll. The event is called Emergence Day. In only 26 hours, the Locust Horde, a race of subterranean creatures, kills 25% of the population of the planet Sera. From that catastrophe grows a…
  • The Elder ScrollsThe Elder Scrolls began as a gladiator game about arena tournaments. Side quests grew as the tournaments shrank.
  • XboxMicrosoft tested the name Xbox as the option it expected to lose. Instead, it scored highest in consumer surveys.
  • Age of MythologyAge of Mythology dropped real history for Zeus, Ra and Odin. Ensemble Studios feared becoming stale and repetitive.
  • Guitar HeroGuitar Hero is a series of rhythm games that handed players a plastic, guitar-shaped controller and challenged them to play along with rock songs. The first game appeared in 2005. Over its lifetime the series sold more than 25 million…
  • ForzaForza is the Italian word for force and strength, and it is also the name of a racing video game series published by Xbox Game Studios for Xbox consoles and Microsoft Windows. Say it the way the series does, FORT-sə. Behind that single…
  • Doom (franchise)Doom is an American media franchise created by five people: John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. Its hero never receives a proper name. Players call him Doomguy, the Doom Marine, or, in later entries, the…

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