> Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and here’s my theory about Pre-Orders in general. I’m just going to use CoD and Halo for examples:
>
> So, lets look at Call of Duty, CoD’s main selling audience is the casual crowd (for the most part). Casual gamers aren’t “connected” in the gaming world as a Dedicated game, so they don’t really notice pre-ordering. Now, when release day hits, they see it in the store, and buy it. Since CoD has less “Hardcore Fans”, it gets less pre-orders (it still gets a lot, but that’s because stores like Gamestop have been giving out pre-order bonuses by the pound, which entices the younger audience to pre-order it, but that’s beside the point).
>
> Now lets go to Halo. Halo’s community is made up of a lot more “Hardcore Gamers”, as I’ll call them. Halo fans generally seem to stay aware of their community more, especially with apps like Halo Waypoint coming out, making them aware of what’s happening. Hardcore Gamers are more “intuned” to stuff like Pre-Ordering, so they pre-order new Halo games, even though adds and stuff for Halo are few and far.
>
> So, to conclude my post, Halo will most definitely get more pre-orders, but it will get a lot less overall sales than CoD, because CoD gets most of its money from Casual players who aren’t involved in the community.
Uhh… wat?
Halo tends to pull younger annoying people.
CoD tends to pull older annoying people.
Outside of that… you’ve pretty much got the same community makeup between the both of them.
I recognize this is a Halo-biased forum and all, but speaking objectively, what you said just ain’t true.
Using my own experiences as an example, I know alot more CoD-only players (read: “hardcore”) than I do Halo-only players. The average Halo player I encounter plays a much wider variety of games than a CoD player does. Hell, I’ve seen more than a few people who’s recently played games looks like something along the lines of CoD MW3, CoD BO, CoD MW2, etc etc. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone with multiple recently played Halos.
Not to mention if you wanted to try to apply any sort of stats to it; using the Top 10 XBL games than Major Nelson posts, Halo has been getting its -Yoink- kicked for a very long time. Casual players will play whatever -> hardcores tend to keep a specific game on top. Not to say that that’s always the case, but it’s the more likely scenario, which would yet again oppose your argument.
Personally, I do think Halo 4 could use more advertisement. FuD is nice and all, but outside of people around here and the like, nobody cares about it. I told a friend about Halo 4 not too long ago (mind you, he loves all of the Halo games, unlike me who only loves CE and somewhat like Reach) and his first response was “there’s a Halo 4?”
Seriously, Halo 4 is still practically a secret at this point compared to what it could/should be.
Then again, maybe that’s their intent. Maybe Halo 4 will be more intended for the “old schoolers” and/or past fans. I’m perfectly fine with that, seeing as Halo’s community typically gets worse with every release anyway.
