It can also be a terrible, terrifying thing. Depends on how it is implemented.

And I honestly don't believe "profit" was the main reason Halo was created by Bungie. I'm sure it's factored into some decisions over the years, but you can have commercial art without commercialized art. Games and movies that just play into what's popular and trending to make an easy profit tend to fade and pass away. Things that were created with some heart in it? That can be felt, and it resonates throughout the artistic decisions made in the work.

The comic I'm working on has a price - that doesn't mean I created it to make a profit. In fact, the only reason it isn't free is in the hope that I can make some money to pay bills, giving me more time to make the comic I want to make.

That is why I worry I'll never enjoy Halo again. Instead of being authored by the same group of people who created it and cared for it, it is now curated as a franchise by a giant corporation. Obviously there are people who work at 343 who care about and love Halo - but that doesn't mean they have pull over the long arc of things. Obviously, I don't work there, and I don't know. It just felt like Bungie had built a buffer zone between their work and Microsoft. MS pushed, Bungie pushed back. Eventually they cut the cord and left Halo behind to find that independence. With Halo being built by a studio created by Microsoft and designed only for that cause... that sort of independence-wrangling would seem to be much more difficult. Not to mention the lack of artistic diversity/freedom a studio like that would suffer from (I've mentioned before I think it would be healthy for 343i and Halo to make things OTHER than Halo).