Microsoft is now selling Halo nail polish with matching in-game items

Halo-themed nail polish.
(Image credit: Xbox.)

Xbox has announced one of the more surprising commercial tie-ups of recent gaming times: A bunch of nail polish that comes with similarly-themed in-game items in Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5. 'Play the Palette' is the nonsensical tagline and the various shades of nail polish come with some absolutely chronic puns.

This is a collaboration between Xbox and OPI, a nail polish brand, and get a load of some of these names. One shade is called Heart and Con-soul, while You Had Me At Halo is "a shimmery galactic blue that will give you sparkly stats." There's also Can't CTRL Me which sounds a bit like a joke about teabagging, who knows: Opi says it's "a shimmery robin’s egg blue that cannot be CTRL’d."

Halo-themed nail polish.

(Image credit: Xbox.)

I suppose one shouldn't be surprised by any commercial tie-in, but it does seem a bit odd that the bottles haven't been a little more themed or that the connection to Xbox is really nothing more than the silly names and some throwaway DLC skins. But it's not like I'm a massive authority on what shades of nail polish are cool.

The stuff will be released February and purchasers (in the US) will unlock "hue-matched, in-game content for Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite starting February 1." You can see an attractive nail polish coloured spartan above.

Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."