Bungie 'careful' over 'Halo' merchandise

As the world gears for up the launch of the epic Halo 3 first-person shooter, developer Bungie has revealed it doesn't want to saturate the market with cheap merchandising deals.

"It's a balancing effort to be very, very careful that we don't over-saturate and piss off our 15 million fans," said Brian Jarrard, franchise lead at Bungie.

"We are obviously looking to broaden Halo and make it accessible ... while at the same time, we want to keep feeding our core audience."

Although Microsoft has had little experience of dealing with toy makers, experts at movie studios have, so the firm has partnered with 20th Century Fox to act as the main licensing agent for the Halo franchise.

Proposed Halo-themed Items turned down by Bungie include a themed lottery ticket, lingerie modelled on a Halo hologram character and toy guns based on weapons in the game.

Instead, a range of action figures from McFarlene Toys, a tabletop game from WizzKids Inc and replica weapons for mature buyers have all been signed up.

"We're very clear with them that this is not about running out and carpet-bombing everything. This is figuring out how in 5 years we're hitting new customers as opposed to in 5 years nobody cares," said Steve Schrek, director of franchise development at Microsoft.