Too big, Take-Two is worth $23bn.

I'm thinking $10bn max, likely around the $5bn range, doubt it will be a major western publisher, likely a big name developer instead.

Honestly, by today’s standards Halo 3’s marketing isn’t even that big. It’s marketing budget was reportedly around $40m, half of Halo 2’s $80m. Reach exceeded Halo 3's marketing budget, but I'm not sure if it exceeded Halo 2's. But none of the current Halo games even comes close to having the highest video game marketing budget. GTA V had a $128m marketing budget just at launch. CD Projekt reportedly spent around $209m on Cyberpunk marketing, nearly 6x more than the $35m they spent on Witcher 3 marketing at release. Modern Warfare 2 reportedly had a $200m marketing budget in 2009, adjusted for inflation that comes out to $240m today.

As for Halo 4, we never heard a figure for it's marketing budget. Halo 4 development budget was reportedly $100m, compared to $40m for Halo 2 and and $35m for Halo 3. It's possible that the Halo 4 figure is a total development + marketing number, rather than development only, or that it was just substantially more expensive to develop. I know 343 had, well, 343 devs at the time, alot more than Bungie had when Halo 2 and 3 were in development, so I guess it's possible the $100m figure could be development only. 

Unfortunately, we never heard much of anything about budgets from MS this gen, except that Fable Legends cost MS around $75m. We never heard a budget figure for Halo 5, Gears 4 or 5, any of the Forza games, nothing really. Considering the fact that MS mainly relied on Hunt the Truth for Halo 5 marketing, I can't imagine that it's marketing budget was higher than Halo 2's. With Halo 5 there was no Mountain Dew or Doritos promotion, no fast food restaurant promotion.

Hopefully MS does a much better job on Halo Infinite marketing. I want a trailer airing during a popular show or sports championship, a 2nd run of the recent Monster Energy promotion, a fast food restaurant promotion, and more. Halo Infinite needs to be the game that makes Halo a cultural phenomenon again, that can't happen without big marketing. 

Great GwG month, now onto the bad.

What an absolute garbage decision to hike the price of Gold, especially by that much, while it won't affect me as I'm on GPU, it doesn't change that this is a shit, anti-consumer decision, I have half a dozen nieces/nephews who will now be paying double for their Gold, who don't have a clue about Game Pass or their parents won't get it because the hard fact is that Game Pass is nowhere near Gold yet, it is still not in the mainstream, parents and such do not know about it or care for it yet.

I was never one who was adamant they would remove Gold, Game Pass is nowhere near Gold subscribers yet and will take a few years to equal it, Microsoft abandoning billions in revenue was always far-fetched and optimistic but to double the price? Wtf? Pure anti-consumer, especially when PC pays for nothing.

It's a crappy way to push people to Game Pass, I'm not sure if it will work, I think it'll just get them deserved backlash, I can only hope GwG is as good as this month going forward and F2P titles 100% need to remove their Gold requirement now, it is going to be an extremely bad look if Halo Infinite MP requires Gold at $120 a year.

Why would they pay more? The statement said that existing subscribers will continue paying the same rate. This change only impacts new potential customers.