This is what is bothering me. Halo was never created to be a cash shop, and I almost don’t even want to know how far they are going to take this. It seems they are (following Bungie’s footsteps at this point.) Not saying things won’t change for the better, but it’s not looking like it.
Games should always be created for the player base as well as the company. If a shop dictates the direction of a game, that is a huge red flag.
This is actually a huge issue, the people below I’m sure most of them want to create a quality type of game, but it is literally out of their control. Gaming today is being ruined because of shops, as you said they are used to replace actual content. Being passionate about a game doesn’t seem to matter anymore with a lot of companies.
The players that like to throw money at any shiny thing are the problem with gaming today. If you look at what Bungie has become today vs Halo days, you can see how far they have fallen. I’m actually upset that now 2 games that I really used to enjoy are being ruined becase of shops.
Have any of you guys looked at the achievements for this game? I quickly looked at steam’s since I’m on pc and a lot of them are directly related to customization and skins, and even for completing a battle pass. It’s so sad lol.
My wife was playing a game and I was actually having a good old chuckle. The rest of her team and the opposing team were bascically player slayer in BTB, she must have missed the invitation. She went and tried out the AI to unlock the door. Had a ride around on a warthog and chopper, then jumped on to a wasp. She went back over to where everybody was having their game of slayer and started shooting her opponents. I was quite proud to hear that the other team was ‘cannon fodder’.
YES. I am am seeing threads shut down for ‘hyperbole’, for ‘going off the rails’, for ‘sexualization’, doesn’t instill much confidence that the community is being listened too.
They have plenty of other ways to make money. The brand halo now has literary everything with the brand halo on it. Not to mention toys, fast food and energy drink promos.
Except the biggest reason genesis and snes carts were expensive back then is because the means yo read write data was not cheap. Still isn’t, look at the cost of a GOOD 1tb ssd vs a 1tb hdd. Prices are vastly different. Again the biggest factor being cost to manufacture.
In an age where physical media is being phased out for downloads, its disgusting how a digital download costs as much as a physical copy. Even if the company self hosts, the reality is your not expending money on discs/carts and the cost of keeping a good bandwidth server up 24/7 is miniscule compared to print 500k copies of a game
Really only telling half the story here. While manufacturing costs are down (relative to the 90’s), every aspect of development involving human labor has only gone up since the 90’s. From dev work to marketing to advertising to shipping to the guy that fills the vending machines, every step involving a human has become more expensive.
Manufacturing being cheaper is also something of a false flag in the greater discussion. While optical storage is absolutely cheaper to manufacture than cartridge based storage, the rollback in physical media production would only increase the per unit cost. For example, a company may have charged .15 per disc for and order of 10 million copies, but if that order is cut down to 5 million (due to increase in digital sales) the per disc rate would likely got up at least 50% to offset such a loss to the manufacturer. Same for disc cases and the printing of the cover inserts. Anyone with any direct experience in or overlap with production of goods can validate this, less quantity nearly always means higher per unit pricing.
I’d wager that the difference in manufacturing costs (cartridge to disc) is the reason that prices were so stable for 2 decades even in the face of rising overall costs. But a 50% or even 80% decrease in manufacturing isn’t going to offset constantly rising costs in every other aspect of the process. That’s one area of expense stacked against several others.
Not directing this at you, but a lot of people like to throw around modern AAA budgets as if their indicative of how much money these companies have to burn while completely ignoring the other side of things, its also indicative of how much AAA development (from top to bottom) costs. Larger dev teams, sometimes international (depending on studio), higher compensation and benefit demands from those larger teams, facilities and equipment/apparatus to support those teams, rising costs of 3rd party advertising agencies, the list goes on. Massive dev budgets are investments with expectations of greater return, not expenditures of discretionary funds. Games (by and large) are developed with an expectation to generate profit, and to be considered profitable the revenue needs to outstrip the investment by a considerable amount.
Those people spending a salary on microtransactions are the problem as well as the company that goes by that business model. I, like you would happily pay $100 for no microtransactions, complete campaign, etc… if it meant no more b.s. shady marketing practices. The biggest point to take from this is that Halo has always been inclusive until halo 5 came around and it adopted a doodoo system. Halo 3 and Halo MCC had it right. You buy the game and everyone is even, no pay walls (except map packs, which I’d gladly support over the color blue)
Except it does. Manufacturing physical media is a sizeable chunk if a game’s budget or used to be before they pumped a good 80% of a budget into marketing.
Costs haven’t really risen. Everything is pretty much the same as it has been for the last decade or so even accounting for inflation.