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Trump' Halo meme The White House Well, there’s yet another headline I can’t believe I’m writing, but continuing the administration’s fascination with social media meme-ing, we have a new development that dips into video game territory. The series of events: On Friday, Microsoft announced that for the first time, a Halo game was coming to PlayStation, the new Halo CE remake of the first game. GameStop issues a joke press release declaring the 20+ year console war “over.” The official government “Rapid Response 47” Twitter account retweets the press release, declaring that this is the 9th war Trump (has claimed to have) ended. GameStop quote tweets that with a seemingly AI picture of Trump and Master Chief shaking hands. Then, the official White House account (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) retweets the press release with an AI picture of Donald Trump in Master Chief armor holding an energy sword, saluting on the White House grounds with an American flag with 40 stars behind him. GameStop responds with a meme depicting Trump inside Master Chief’s helmet with a famously goofy version of JD Vance in the back as Cortana. That’s the situation as it stands, I will update with any breaking developments. This chain of events has nearly 20 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes. No, I do not think Trump is literally claiming credit for ending the console war during his administration. Well, I’m 80% sure. MORE FOR YOU The game development space is mostly liberal, so it has produced a lot of eye-rolling. Players, on the other hand, are more split politically, so there is some amount of guffawing about this. GameStop is capitalizing on the attention. Microsoft and Xbox have said nothing, but Microsoft President Satya Nadella has been close to the administration, like all tech giants have. WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 19: (L-R) U.S. President Donald Trump, Microsoft CEO Stya Nadella and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos attend a meeting of the American Technology Council in the State Dining Room of the White House June 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. According to the White House, the council's goal is "to explore how to transform and modernize government information technology." (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Getty Images I doubt Trump himself actually knows what Halo is, but he apparently has an army of Zoomers trolling the internet for trending topics and memes (I have no doubt many are gamers). We see this a lot, especially with AI photos and videos, though dipping into pop culture occasionally results in things like copyright takedown notices. That won’t happen here. The actual gaming news is a pretty big deal, as 5-10 years ago, much less 20, it would have seemed insane for Halo to be coming to PlayStation, but Microsoft has fully moved into a “we’re releasing all our big games and IPs everywhere” phase with its console business slowing and its desire to expand its reach to more devices, even PlayStation. So this is…something. Worth an article? I mean, the most powerful in the government in the world is tweeting about Halo, I would argue yes, and here we are. on TwitterYouTube, Instagram Herokiller series The Earthborn Trilogy. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
