You’re acting like this hasn’t been tried. Prices have been stable in the face of rising costs for over a decade. You’re literally paying at retail about 1/2-3/4 what you’d pay for major cartridge releases on the SNES and N64 era. Games releasing at $60 retail, to then have paid expansions for content within a few months blew up in publishers faces. Attempting to raise the sticker price blew up in publishers faces. Mobile games sales showed them that microtransactions were insanely successful, and here we are.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate this nonsense, but the reality is that at least half the reason we’re here in the first place is because entitled twits called “gamers” felt we should keep getting more and more at the same price point. It’s easy to scapegoat corporate greed, but gamers complaints about stuff like this ranks right up there with “buy America” people turning around and complaining about how expensive domestic goods costs.
Just because it’s been tried doesn’t mean they tried very hard, seems like they gave up. This is almost like blaming the audience because the comedian sucks. “If we had only laughed more then maybe the jokes would be funny now”
For the most part this is a great game, it plays well and I’m having a lot of fun.
Sure there’s a store, and things are a little pricey, but that’s for the individual to decide.
And the armour core segregation situation is a quite annoying, but I can live with it.
No overarching and ‘visible’ progression system, ok whatever.
But…
The audacity to lie to us about what to expect is TRULEY DISGUSTING!
OP you’ve pretty much summed up most of the issues, but I have one more.
Pretty much all the promotional material for this supposedly ‘free event’, has featured an armour set THAT IS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR MONEY!
And the other amours are specifically time-locked well into 2022, by design, so why use them to advertise a week long event that takes place pre-release in this supposed Beta?
I get it, it’s not 2010 anymore, and the gaming landscape has changed since then. But common human decency and honest marketing have not.
To the creative team who worked hard on this game, I salute you! This is great work.
To the suits, we’ll, I’d rather not get banned.
It is very disappointing kind of like No Mans Sky which took around three years to get to where it was promoted. NMS is actually a freaking awesome game for COOP now, hopefully this doesn’t take that long for things to be tweaked.
That’s not even a remotely accurate analogy and based on your previous posts you’re smart enough to know that. How hard are publishers supposed to try and get consumers to pay more for something they feel they shouldn’t have to? Exactly? How much money should they lose until gamers buy in? Do you have any idea how many development studios were shuttered or bought up due to financial instability in the 2000’s and 2010’s because people thought a game wasn’t even worth $60 so they’d buy it used? And the industry is supposed to just push $70 or $80 and hope it catches when market buying habits show consumers that think $60 is asking too much? Why do you think the entire AAA industry wanted to push for aggressive DRM measures going into the previous console generation? The massive consumer backlash to which caused everyone to step away from the notion and leave MS holding the bag for what started as an industry-wide push. Backlash so strong it heavily hamstrung the Xbox One sales and market penetration for an entire console cycle. But they’re supposed to try harder to convince a bunch of entitled adults that stuff costs more than it used to? Cmon now.
I make no excuses for microtransactions and their being purely revenue driven, but a lot of people don’t seem to understand that revenue is required for gaming to exist. Consumer buying trends makes clear year over year that the same people that balk at anything over $60 at retail will spend three times that on a single game via impulse buys. Publishers found their revenue stream, and like every other business what started as a necessary offset became about profit.
If games aren’t making enough money to pay costs when publishers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, then maybe they shouldn’t be spending that much on the games. If gamers won’t pay more than $60, and the Publishers can’t grow their audience, then maybe the games simply cost too much to make, and they should scale back. There have been some hugely successful games which weren’t hundreds of millions.
Publishers can go the microtransactions route if they want, but I think they’ll find the people who pay for those are a different audience. Who don’t necessarily like the same types of games. It might not work out for them. So maybe they’ll have to dial back how much they spend on games.
Now, I’m not saying people should accept a bit higher price. I would. But if a product isn’t making money it’s not the fault of the people who had no say in how it was developed and marketed.
I would agree to this if microtransactions didn’t ultimately lead to increase in overall revenue. The issue isn’t that the money wasn’t there, but people feeling they shouldn’t have had to spend it. Getting someone to make repeated sub $20 purchases is a lot easier than getting them to make a one-time $80 purchase, its a proven science and a corner stone of marketing.
It’s not necessarily easier to get people who are core Halo fans and will stick around longer than a year to make repeated $20 purchases. The free to play audience is a different audience. They may make more money, but from different people. If they want to make money from the core Halo fans I doubt they’re going to do it with these $20 cosmetics that you can’t even mix and match. I think scaling down costs would be a better approach if they want to target the Halo audience. If they want the mobile free to play audience that’s fine, it’s their choice who they target. But then they have to accept the backlash and people not sticking around for longer than a year.
Not the whole industry. Hello Games is a good model for screw ups, and I hope 343 follows them, but I know I may just be hoping for the impossible, but I can hope.
Had they only used the Halo Reach Earn Credits after each match. Those who chose to grind heavy for credits save money, those who chose to slip the ground and can spend their money, but the options are there. Right now we only have one option… Spend real money, for the color blue … Or blue wot some red on it
Well put! In the first few trailers we see a giant piece of Zeta Halo destroyed and the story is something with the Banshied happened. I bet what really happend was 343i locked that portion behind a pay wall and Master Chief has to pay to see what happend.
I understand being the devils advocate but I’m not with you man like why are you even lowering yourself to speak to us entitled gamers? I’m not buying your argument. The only thing I have to say to you is that there is more than one way to solve the issue. You can’t blame the consumers for choices the game companies made. Choosing to do skeevy things like coding the grind to be insane and locking away portions of a game to sell separately is not the only solution. It’s definitely the only solution that turns customers into prey. You’re smart enough to know that and so are the developers.
spot on man. especially with this time gated progression practice to keep player numbers up every other month.
It’s disgusting. I haven’t seen any other company do this except Bungie with Destiny 1/2.
I guess both bungie and 343 are taking notes of each other still.
My impression is that the player-first mentality was their original intention. Look at what they did for MCC. Sure, the game was broken at launch, but they didn’t have to revisit it after several years and go above and beyond with quality-of-life improvements such as a very friendly battle pass.
Everybody was expecting Infinite to be a massive success. 343 has been so community-focused recently that I have a hard time believing that the aggression of these micro transactions was their idea. Also remember that this game was supposed to be a Series X/S launch title before 343 convinced Microsoft to delay the game for a full year because it clearly wasn’t ready.
This smells like the stench of Microsoft to me. Regardless, this will change if we openly voice our disapproval and show it by not spending in the shop.
I really want a paid option that grants everything in the game through gameplay, like every other Halo. Besides buying my second Halo reach pack in Halo 5 after I spent the 100K credits on the first one, I unlocked every single possible items in the reqs and company challenges without paying, this even included MCC achievement armor. Halo 5 with reqs had a friendly system for unlocking customization, even when it was random.
Then present one. Present an argument that covers rising costs, that consumers will support (and how to get them to do so), and maintains profit growth. Here’s the problem: everything I’ve laid out isn’t a “devils advocate” argument, it’s a presentation of verifiable info collected over years of tech and business articles and press releases, further unformed by professional experience after holding positions across two different industries that both dealt directly with cost management and profit margins. This isn’t me being “devils advocate”, this is a “through the looking glass” argument. I’ve seen “lower the price, offset by bulk” measures fail. I’ve seen “loyalty programs” fail. I’ve seen “undercut competitive pricing” fail. I’ve seen “outdo the competition” fail. Literally everyone in every industry has seen “the customer is always right” fail. Consumer behavior ABSOLUTELY informs marketing and business decisions, there are literal college courses and actual professions based on the study and application of such info. As I’ve said, consumer behavior is at least half the reason why we are where we are now in gaming.
Market data has made it abundantly clear over several years that consumers will shell out over $100 bucks by way of low price impulse buys on a single game, sometimes even on multiple games. Even people who complain about games being more than $60 will go on to spend far more than that by way of microtransactions. The app market proved this around a decade ago and the gaming industry caught on and copied the formula. Acting like consumers have somehow been hoodwinked or swindled into this is not only inaccurate but completely disingenuous.
I am someone who would happily pay $100 for a AAA title if it meant a full, comprehensive title with 0 microtransactions and all the bells and whistles there for me to achieve, but I’m in an extreme minority. Too many people still feel that what they paid 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years ago (in some contexts) for non-essential goods should still be the price for those goods. If you have a way to change that disposition for millions of people (and I’m being 100% sincere here) you need to write it out, patent it, and start selling your services.
Please keep in mind, none of this is to endorse or condone FTP, I hate the practice. Im also not a fan with 343i tripling down on incentives for microtransactions by way of a slow and limited grind. But people have a severe lack of perspective on the subject itself, and Infinites issues surrounding the mechanic.
My assumption, based on what they’ve put forward thus far and where the industry is as a whole, is that they are trying to bring the franchise into the modern era and roll the dice where core Halo fans are concerned to attract a broader audience, and I don’t believe doing so is as risky as you may think.
This is pure conjecture on my part, but based on feedback not only for Infinite but years on the older Bungie forum from when they had the franchise, the bulk of Halo players are here to play Halo, not put on a fashion show. While the FTP approach will definitely turn up peoples backs, the realization that every playable aspect of the game is 100% free will likely win for the people that just want to play the game. Every Halo sequel is met with people losing their minds over changes, and stating (sometimes entirely inaccurately) that their previous title did it better or the new title “isn’t Halo”. While the bulk of the Infinite backlash is definitely the FTP model, Infinite is not unique receiving a ton of backlash as a new Halo game.
If their going to curate this the way every other FTP game dev has, they’ll be watching and making changes as needed. I think the bigger issue in the here and now is less about the price and more about the value. $20 for a full armor kit isn’t out of step with $20 for an operator ID pack in CoD, for example. I think the matter move would be to unlock coatings and visors so they apply to all core types and even vehicles and weapons, and consider changing some shoulder accessories to be universal instead of purely set specific. To this point the only thing I’ve seen in the shop that was just a total rip was that event sword belt. $15 for an accessory and some redundant emblems is backhanded in any game. The other side they need to address is retooling the challenges so that they do not detract from organic gameplay (the way they currently do), and offsetting per match xp to supplement people who just don’t want to grind challenges. That’ll be a little harder to do balance, but it’s a QOL thing they should always be monitoring. That said in the group of 12 people I play with, since launch we’ve all gotten to lvl 15, some to 19, in a few hours a night and no boosts. The terror that is the grind is being overblown somewhat.