With blockbuster titles like BioShock, Crysis, Haze, Jericho or COD4, the fall of 2007 is definitely going to be a delight for the FPS-genre fans, but what really stands out from this select crowd is the debut of the long-expected Halo 3.

Debut might be the wrong word to begin a short description of Halo 3’s importance for the Xbox 360 platform, since Microsoft and Bungie have been advertising the title with the “Finish the Fight” slogan. In a twisted way of putting it and as a reminder of another famous super-hero, for Halo 3 the end begins this month…

Indeed, with a bittersweet wave of melancholy in our voices, we have to admit that the Halo franchise is coming to an end this September, when Masterchief will eventually take his bubble shield-along with the plethora of new weapons included in his arsenal- and fight his way over to our living rooms. For the last time.

By now, most of you have probably read the different Halo 3 reviews posted on the Web by prominent gaming sites and the high scores Bungie’s title received must have increased your appetite to either buy the game for your existing console, or buy the Xbox 360 and the game together.

You are potentially aware of the fact that you won’t be playing anything else than a Halo 2 with a little bit of polished graphics and more advanced AI. But you’ll be doing that in the best way possible, and although it might not be something completely new, Halo 3 will definitely catch you into its atmosphere. Packed with lush, tropical jungles or frozen plateaus crawling with foes ready to snipe you, the latest installment in the Halo franchise is definitely a peak for the first person shooter genre in general, and a memorable gaming experience for any Xbox 360 owner.

I won’t spoil the pleasure of finding out for yourselves how our favorite hero finishes the fight though. Instead, I’ll try to illustrate how the Halo franchise’s end actually means a new beginning for the Xbox division at Redmond.

As you all know, the first Halo title (Halo: Combat Evolved) was built for the original Xbox. It received numerous applauses and drove sales for Microsoft’s newly launched console, being considered one of the best FPS games launched in 2001. But it was not until Halo 2 that the franchise really took off , and along with it, the Xbox platform too. According to estimates, Halo 2 is now in the hands of more than 8 million people- the recent PC-port for Windows Vista being included. Halo 2 shattered all records in the US for a media product, with sales of more than $125 million registered for a single day (November 9, 2004, the day it debuted). Until the arrival of Epic’s Gears of War, Halo 2 held the record for the most played game on Xbox Live and it still holds the record for the longest streak as the #1 game on Microsoft’s online community.

With the arrival of Halo 3, all those records are going to fall. Even Epic Games’ Mark Rein admitted that Gears of War’s performance on the market and on Xbox Live will simply be dwarfed by the massive interest gamers have in Halo 3. Pre-orders for Halo 3 have topped 1 million a month ago, but we’re not yet 100% certain that they reached 1.5 million, like in Halo 2’s case (although there’s a pretty good reason to think that actually happened).

Both Microsoft and Bungie have strained to bring out the best game in the Halo saga and according to the pre-launch reviews they’ve succeeded in their endeavor. But what mattered most in this interval that passed between Halo 2 and Halo 3 was Microsoft’s heavy investment in advertisement.

Most people forget that a very good game owns its high scores and increased popularity among gamers to the strategy applied by its publisher before the actual release. Halo 3 is a perfect illustration of that situation. Without Microsoft’s cash flow, Halo 3 wouldn’t be making headlines all over the world and is hard to believe that Blizzard’s record of 2.7 million copies sold in the first day (for World of Warcraft’s expansion The Burning Crusade) would be threatened.

But Microsoft has every interest in making Halo 3 successful. Considering the latest overheating-scandals that the Xbox 360 had to endure and the suffocating competition from Nintendo and Sony, Halo 3 is definitely the exclusive title that might revitalize sales for troubled console.

Recently, the Redmond behemoth bragged with having sold more than 11.6 million Xbox 360s. Although that might sound impressive, you have to consider that the console is out in wild for almost two years now and that Nintendo’s Wii is closing in faster than ever.

So, again, Microsoft has every interest in creating a huge positive… halo for Halo 3, that should outshine any other title from any other platform, even including the recently launched BioShock, whose ratings are similar to Halo 3’s. This is why the software giant partnered with the likes of Mountain Dew, Pontiac or even Burger King: it needs to keep the hype up and running, for the sake of Xbox 360 sales. The world will judge Microsoft for what it does now with its highly-anticipated first person shooter and everyone knows that it’s a “before and after Halo 3” judgment. Masterchief’s final fight has to be a chef-d’oeuvre for no one will forgive Microsoft or Bungie for screwing things up, especially not the investors, who are mystified by the continuous losses the Xbox division registers.

All in all, Microsoft and Bungie have set the standards high before launching Halo 3 and apparently they’ve kept their promise to deliver the ultimate Halo experience to eager fans. It remains to be seen whether this peak (translated into higher sales for the Xbox 360) will be followed by another massive drop, with Halo 3’s halo outshining all other FPS titles, or whether titles like Call of Duty 4, BioShock and Jericho will be able to keep up and drive sales after the Halo hype has faded out. This fall is filled with enticing, multi-platform titles (including the astounding PC game Crysis) and without the Halo 3-exclusivity the Xbox 360 would have certainly lost the fight.

For Microsoft “Finish the Fight” actually means a new fight, even harder than before, because they’ll have to come up with titles at least as good as Halo 3. For the sake of gaming, I hope they will.