An announcement from Microsoft last week revealed the launch of Halo 4 will be in direct competition not just with other games, but with the American election.

The first game in an entirely new trilogy of Halo games has been confirmed for worldwide release on November 6, the same day Americans (or those Americans that choose to) go to the polls to decide whether or not to retain Barack Obama for another term as president.

This is no small matter. In 2004 Halo 2 sold 2.4 million copies in the first day of US sale, grossing $125 million. Three years later Halo 3 topped that by grossing $170 million, becoming the fastest-selling game in history.

Whether those figures could be repeated or exceeded for Halo 4, given there will be an election on at the time, remains to be seen. However given the lasting devotion of fans to the series, as evidenced by its continued popularity for online play and machinima, and by the expansion of the universe in books, comics, anime and spin-off games, there’s at least a strong chance voter turnout will be negatively affected.

Regardless of the impact, and this is where what seemed at first to be straight news becomes obviously my personal (but informed) opinion, the detriment lies entirely on Barack Obama.

Those deterred from voting to buy and play Halo 4 are likely to be young, likely to be students and unlikely to be millionaires or ‘privileged’, but likely to be somewhat educated, likely to be tech savvy and likely to have a sense of humour. In other words, the majority of Mitt Romney’s vote is safe.

The progressive youth vote is a key point of difference for Obama and his campaign, as evidenced by his use of a recent spot on Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night to slow-jam a spiel about keeping university costs affordable.

Conan O’Brien, an ironically much older talk show host, has put his money on the other side of the Halo / election battle for attention. Halo developer 343 Studios has been very secretive with its latest project but chose to give details on episodes of the past week’s Conan. One of the shows included a 9 minute sketch of Conan discussing seemingly innocuous details of the game with 343 staff that set certain pockets of the community ablaze. At the end of the sketch, there was even 6 or 7 seconds of ACTUAL MULTIPLAYER FOOTAGE.

Being Conan, of course the bit was hilarious. It also shows that the older host has had time to get know his audience very well indeed. Although the school hall where they were filming Late Night afforded Obama a very positive reaction, a YouTube or Google search will tell you that same demographic went positively insane for 7 seconds of non-specific generic-looking Halo 4 footage.

In a battle to get the youth and techno-layabouts on-side, I don’t see that talk of cheaper schooling, health care or so-called ‘politics’ is going to cut it. Barack Obama, it’s time to get creative.