Xbox, the Microsoft owned gaming console, has seen millions of copies of the first person shooter game Halo played by its users the world over. With the latest version of Halo being released before the Christmas season, Microsoft wanted to give its video game franchise another winning title. That is why the company launched an experimental live action Halo miniseries on YouTube. Since October, the videos from Microsoft have gotten 26 million views on the Google owned video streaming site. This is good news for Google because it proves that long form video content does have a future on YouTube.
The Machinima YouTube channel premiered the “Halo: Forward Unto Dawn” five-part miniseries as a promotion for the upcoming game. The studio 343 Industries doled out $10 million to produce the videos. Director of franchise business development a for 343 Industries, Matt J. McCloskey, explais that the mini-series focused on a Halo 4 character Thomas Lasky. Not only did it give the back-story to the video games universe, it also helps newcomers to the franchise learn the story behind the game.
Machinima states that the first part of the mini-series got over 9 million YouTube views and each subsequent video got a little over 4 million views each. According to Machinima’s Executive Vice President of Marketing, Kevin Doohan, the drop in viewership is normal for series that have multiple episodes. He also adds that, “After the original trailer got 9 million views, there was so much heat and excitement about our premiere.” Doohan also commented on the other stats that made the web series a success including the 34% higher favorite tagging than other content on the channel. He also added that viewership did not drop off after the first 19 minutes to the last minute.
Doohan is optimistic about the format and says that, “We see a great future in this content. I would see us doing much, much more of this long form stuff. It’s a great marraige between our content creators and our audience.”
Source: Mashable
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