Halo was publicly introduced to the world by Steve Jobs in 1999 as a massively anticipated third-person real-time strategy game built strictly and exclusively for Apple Macintosh computers.

A closer look

Halo was publicly introduced to the world by Steve Jobs in 1999 as a massively anticipated third-person real-time strategy game built strictly and exclusively for Apple Macintosh computers. The entire original concept involved carefully managing futuristic troops from a top-down perspective on alien worlds, radically different from the legendary first-person shooter experience that the franchise is known for today. Just months after this massive Apple keynote presentation, Microsoft aggressively swooped in, completely bought out the development studio Bungie, and forcefully ripped the game away from Mac users to serve as the flagship launch title for their brand-new Xbox console. The developers were forced to frantically redesign the entire game perspective, scrap the strategy elements, and rebuild it as a frantic shooter. Apple fans were left completely devastated and entirely without a killer app, forced to watch from the sidelines as Microsoft built a massive galactic empire