Halo 4: Population, Success, and longevity.

Games Other Halo
1

Hey, all.
Just to begin, I do want to apologize with the disorganization of this thread. I kind of had a problem managing to get my main point across. But, I hope you all take the time to read this, and post your response. This thread is for discussing everyone’s thoughts on how Halo 4 will fare, in terms of online success.

With Halo 4 being one of the most highly anticipated games of the 2012, (Apparently.) it seems that it would be fair to say that it’s been hyped up. A lot. With Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, and the Halo 4 Game Fuel dropping in the coming months, (Oct. 5th for FUD, Sept 24th for Game Fuel.) it would also appear that the marketing for the game this time around is one of the larger marketing campaigns that Halo has had.

If you’ve been following gaming as a whole, you’ll know that in terms of competition, Halo 4 has a few competitors. The biggest, as you may have been able to gather/guess, is Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Now… We all know that CoD is big. REALLY big. Ever since WaW/MW2, CoD has absolutely dominated the first person shooter market, and console games in general. Somehow, Activision has been able to push out a CoD game every year, with EVERY different edition being able to sell INCREDIBLY well. This year is no different, with the latest edition.

CoD remains to haveTWOof it’s different editions on the XBL Top 5 charts. The same Top 5 that Halo: Reach only barely manages to stay on the #5 spot.
#5 is good… But for the Flagship franchise? It could fare better.

I’m not trying to turn this into a CoD vs Halo thing. PLEASE don’t turn this thread into that.

I’m just concerned for Halo 4. To be honest, I felt Reach was lucky. So… How will Halo 4 be? With all the revisions, innovations, and just over-all accessibility be able to reclaim the immense popularity that it once had?

<mark>Do you think that it has the ability to draw in new and old players alike? Those who exclusively play CoD? Maybe even those that only do PC gaming? Personally, I think it’s a long-shot; but not impossible. Halo used to be the most popular for a reason.</mark>
Personally, I think it will be most certainly more popular than Reach. At the very least, I hope that it is. But, I’m mainly takign that guess based off of the marketing. Who knows?

Maybe Forward Unto Dawn will intrigue fans of good sci-fi. Maybe, if there’s some sort of bonus, Game Fuel will provide just that little bit of extra incentive to play War Games. Maybe Spartan Ops will turn out to be the gift of the gods, and attract hundreds of thousands of people to keep coming back.

I’m not saying popularity will make a good game. Definitely not.
I just want to know your feelings on this. For me, this is a concern. Not the biggest concern, mind you! But, nonetheless, a concern.
Please, share your thoughts!

2

This could all happen,

if they started their ad campaign…

3

To attract more people to the game, they need MULTIPLAYER and CAMPAIGN trailers, not silly live action trailers which have absolutely nothing to do with the game whatsoever. They also need to advertise it all over the dashboard. But none of this will happen, because Microsoft treats CoD like an Xbox exclusive and treats Halo like another crappy game on the market.

When they get these giant crowds, they need to keep them playing and give out rewards, etc. in games to give matchmaking more replay value, but the medals are tiny, which isn’t very rewarding. If they want people to stay with the game, they’d make it more rewarding.

4

what they need to do is start advertising the damn game with real trailers for the campaign. the last one we had was in e3 2012. live action, 30 second clips, and documentaries dont count. i want one like halo 3 e3 2007 or reach the battle begins. im already hyped, but that will make me happy, and get alot of other people pumped up too

5

I think it looks like a fusion of what Bungie were trying to do (apparently they failed, but I love Reach) and Halo 3. They’ve said there will be “classic” playlists that are the arena style gameplay we all love, as well as the “Infinity” gamemode, with it’s ordinance drops and loadouts.

Hopefully this game will build on Reach’s foundation.

6

I am one of those people who only played CoD who is now making the transition Halo, with my introduction being Halo 4. So it’s definitely possible… I’m living proof…

7

Cod is going to win. There’s no denying. But Halo 4, IMO, will be able to get high enough that it will give cod a run for their money. Players who play cod and rage quit will be putting in their Halo 4 discs. Similarly, Halo 4 players who rage quit will go to cod. Thats what I think will happen. But yes, I think it will attract a lot more old and new players. After the…drop in hype due to Reach, many of the old Halo players went to cod. If they’re still here, which they probably are, they’d be thinking of all the fun they had, and probably buy both things.

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> With all the revisions, innovations, and just over-all accessibility be able to reclaim the immense popularity that it once had?

No, Halo 4 won’t be as succesful, nor does it have as much longetivity as Halo once had. To end a trend, you need to start a new one. For game to take the popularity from another, the game needs to be innovative and drastically different from that game. It applied in the case of CoD beating Halo in 2009. CoD 4 was something different from Halo, it was something new. There is no doubt the Halo trend would’ve continued had CoD not gotten so succesful, because a new trend needs to be born before the old can die.

Halo 4 lacks what a new trend should have. As far as I know about the things revealed to us about Halo 4, there isn’t anything large and innovative about it, anything someone succesful hasn’t done before. CoD 4 had the ability to capture a new direction of shooters, it told a story of modern war and the threat of terrorists. Ten years ago, Halo did the same thing by telling a proper story in a first person shooter, and that’s what really got people’s attention. Halo 4 doesn’t seem to have something that would really catch people’s attention.

The second thing a trend needs is something different. That’s a front where I see Halo 4 really lacking. It’s not different, it’s all you’ve played before. Not only for a Halo player, but to a CoD player too. If you think about how CoD got its success, it was by being a class based shooter that got all the aspects right in an era dominated by an arena shooter. It was different. Halo 4 is a class based shooter, heavily relying on elements that are popular in the shooter genre these days. Now, that is a guaranteed popularity to some extent, but it’s not a way to world domination. People who like the modern shooter will still play their favorite franchises. People who want something new, only see Halo either as the same old Halo or yet another modern shooter. Being like everyone else is a one way ticket to oblivion, it will only give you mediocre success. Halo 4 will only get the popularity because of its name. Did it not have the publicity, it would not succeed.

Last of all, Halo 4 doesn’t have the recipe for longetivity. That’s something very few games actually have. It suffers from a lack of depth because it follows the modern shooter trend very well, a trend that guides the player instead of letting them explore. And by lack of exploration I don’t mean lack of huge environments Halo is known for, but lack of expoloration in the sandbox. “Halo 4 lets you tailor your own loadout to suit your playstyle”. Couoldn’t it be for the better that players spawn as equal, letting them explore the maps and the sandbox and find their playstyle from there. It’s not really customization that seems to be the word of the day in the video games industry these days, but it sure makes the player explore the sandbox more and teaches them valuable things on their way.

The FPS genre is in need of something new and Halo 4 definitely isn’t that. I’m not completely putting the blame on poor design philosophy. Halo 4 already loses a large part of being new with the fact that “Halo” is already a known game, so it’s really not new in that regard. However, I think 343i could’ve taken the less safe route and actually tried to come up with a truly innovative gameplay model and potentially revive the franchise and the genre.

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> I am one of those people who only played CoD who is now making the transition Halo, with my introduction being Halo 4. So it’s definitely possible… I’m living proof…

Cool.
Out of interest, can I ask why you make the switch from cod to halo? Do you think cod is getting too stale and boring cuz every “new” cod is pretty much the same old stuff? What made you choose halo?

I wanna hear some info, it’s not everyday we see here cod player saying he wants to start playing halo.

So plz lol

10

Halo has such superb graphics and animations (take for instance one Spartan falling to the floor after being killed on Multiplayer) that I don’t understand why Microsoft isn’t exploiting gameplay videos in its marketing campaign.
These sort of videos AND live action trailers should be advertised more, on Tv AND internet, plus magazines ads.

Halo’s biggest competitor, cod, has such poor animations, Microsoft should use the things that Halo is way better at than Black Poop II -like graphics- to make a statement and stand up from that other game.
For instance, watch that cod multiplayer trailer where you see a bird-size airplane drop-down and kill a soldier. The animation of the soldier dying looks like was made/drawn by a 10 year old.

Anyway…at the end of the day, after both games are released, nothing about advertising campaigns will matter. People is not stupid, they will watch gameplay videos on youtube and decide which game will pick up.
If they like the game they chose, they’ll stay playing it, and if not they will simply switch or just stop playing that game.

In the long run, the most appealing game will stay on top of the list of games played on LIVE. And I’d bet my house that game will be Halo, but I’m not gonna because there are so many people that I just don’t understand why they like cod games.

It’s like Shakira: her music is so -Yoink-, but still manages to appeal to a lot of people.

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Quite. Plus all players that like Halo like the competitive play as well. So if you are competitive why not play Halo? Its normal for human beings to be competitive so…

12

Well I can definitely say that when Halo4 starts out it’s MM will be small. This is due to Halo’s reputation from Reach for having long kill times, AA and constant black screens. Whether the MM will remain small is difficult to say.

If Halo4 can draw on just a small percentage of the CoD fanbase then expect MM to be far larger than Reach however I do not believe this will happen. Instead, if Halo is to stand any chance of gaining MM support it must first draw in players with the campaign; players from Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed being the main target market groups. This hopefully will encourage them to play the MM.

As for support from its fanbase, it all depends on how large the classic playlist is. If the classic playlist is constricted then expect no MLG coverage, pathetically small amounts of people on the classic playlist and MASSIVE flame wars on the forums.

Finally how will Halo cope with time? Like all games the MM service will shrink over time as it does with nearly all games. [One exception is Halo3 where there are often just as many players as there are in Reach]

Oh and more marketing videos wouldn’t hurt, Halo has great graphics and reputation to back it up; it does seem a bit odd that Microsoft is leaving its flagship in the dark.

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> Well I can definitely say that when Halo4 starts out it’s MM will be small. This is due to Halo’s reputation from Reach for having long kill times, AA and constant black screens. Whether the MM will remain small is difficult to say.

Quite the opposite in fact. In every game, no matter what, the matchmaking player counts over time are always a hyperbolic curve. The first day player counts are always larger than the game will ever achieve again. If anything, the player counts will be the largest Halo has ever gotten due to an increased amount of potential customers and the fact that Master Chief’s return really is a big thing to some people. How steep the curve is over time depends on how many players the game manages to captivate.

The amount of players ending up with playing the game regurarly after its release is decided by a two phased process. First and the most important phase is the first impression. It’s the moment when the player will judge the game, regardless of do they have enough playtime to make a rational judgement. The second phase is the longetivity of the game. That phase really differentiates the players following the masses from the fans. Halo 4 will be big at first and then either fade away or continue with a steady popularity depending on how well it manages to satisfy the playerbase.

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with the controversy that Activision, Infinity Ward and Treyarch gathered over the past few years (like Activision’s BS excuse for closing various developers of the good and popular games that THEY published), id say that if BO2 flops, id say the franchise is entirely doomed to rot away and die a short-suffering death and eventually be on the same bargain bin that Activision has dumped the good games of it’s closed subsidiaries (Radical Games for example) in