There’s an odd little article on USA Today this week that suggests Halo is trying to mimic Star Wars in its spin-offs and merchandising. If you want to see some numbers for the franchise it’s a good read, but the article is missing a crucial link: how comic books + action figures + books + sequels + movies = Star Wars.

To be fair, I understand the correlation. Few story worlds have captured public imagination quite like Halo has, but there have been enough of those things lately to realize that Star Wars was no unique phenomenon. Bear with me people. If you take a look at what I’ll call popular story worlds today, they have all been marketed in similar fashion across various media. Harry Potter has spinoff books, figures, video games, children’s toys, and on and on. Lord of the Rings has a similar brand identity. Twilight has completely changed the town in which the story takes place, taking it from a small town to a major tourist location.

What we might be able to say more accurately is that Star Wars is the first of these popular-story-worlds-turned-moneymaking-machines that has survived into the modern age. Comic book heroes took their sweet time getting here, and Lord of the Rings was so long in the making, the movies that is, that many thought it would never happen. But George Lucas did a great job turning Star Wars into more than just a great movie trilogy.

As long as people can find a way to monetize a story, we’ll be hearing this argument. Is it the next Harry Potter? The next Twilight? The next Lord of the Rings? It’s not any of those things, just the next enchanting narrative that got exploited for mass consumption.

The Halo Waypoint Twitter account posted some fantastic information earlier today. The service designed to completely inundate you with anything and everything related to Halo launches on November 5th.

As the Twitter feed said:

Nov 5. Mark it on your calendar. That’s when you will get your hands (or controllers) on Halo Waypoint. 🙂

Just think of the massive influx of pimple-faced boys, those same 13 year-olds who corpse hump you and call you all sorts of non-PC names, that will be gracing the Xbox Live servers on the 5th, hoping for gratuitous Cortana nudity. It could be a great day, but it’s probably going to be a sad day.

Microsoft’s initial announcement of Halo Waypoint was short on details and long on promises about integrating with your “Halo lifestyle.” I don’t even know what a “Halo lifestyle” means, but I can think of a few years of my life in which I tried to find out. Former Bungie man Frank O’Connor stopped by Comic-Con to release a few details on the upcoming Waypoint.

According to Frankie, Halo Waypoint is about more than just games and videos. It’s a place for fans to get together and enjoy content. “We’re going to aggregate everything that you would want to watch from the halo universe on that site,” he said. “But it’s a lot more ambitious than that. It’s going to evolve in features and functionality to make it the prime destination for the Halo fan.”

Well thanks, Frank. That really clears things up. He goes on to say that you’ll be able to view things like old E3 trailers and potentially access new multiplayer features. To be Frank frank, Frank wasn’t very forthcoming. In fact, no one’s clear whether Silver members will have access to Waypoint in its entirety or if there will be features exclusive to Gold members.

The one thing O’Connor did actually give details for was the premier of the Halo Legends anime episodes. The episodes will be available on a “staggered schedule” over Waypoint. It won’t be quite like a television broadcast, but there will be time constraints between the initial viewing and a Blu-Ray/digital distro release.