Halo Wars 3? Likely?

Games Halo Wars Series
1

Reasons for a sequel:

  • Some fans seem interested in the characters and story. This gives 343 some credibility and goodwill; something it lacks. Theres a reason people forgave Bungie for Destiny’s launch, because that brand (and it really is a brand) has an association of quality; so every failure is considered a misstep. Whereas 343 has developed a negative image for itself.

  • There seems to be some interest in having a console RTS. Its a neat little gimmick for the Xbox which wants to boast that it has a range of exclusive titles.

  • They have already invested in getting the game running on the Xbox One. If you have sunk costs, then it makes sense to recoup your investment.

Reasons against a sequel:

  • RTS is a niche genre not played by majority of Halo players. Investment in HW won’t necessarily get a good return or improve goodwill because people won’t engage with it.

  • The first game had a lukewarm reception. Mixed reviews, low sales, rejection by PC gamers.

  • Perhaps the money spent on Halo Wars 3 could be used elsewhere? Perhaps this story could be spun into a non RTS spin off title that would be more successful? Basically opportunity costs.

2

> 2533274803587475;1:
> Reasons for a sequel:* Some fans seem interested in the characters and story. This gives 343 some credibility and goodwill; something it lacks. Theres a reason people forgave Bungie for Destiny’s launch, because that brand (and it really is a brand) has an association of quality; so every failure is considered a misstep. Whereas 343 has developed a negative image for itself.
>
> * There seems to be some interest in having a console RTS. Its a neat little gimmick for the Xbox which wants to boast that it has a range of exclusive titles.
>
> Reasons against a sequel:* RTS is a niche genre not played by majority of Halo players. Investment in HW won’t necessarily get a good return or improve goodwill because people won’t engage with it.
>
> * The first game had a lukewarm reception. Mixed reviews, low sales, rejection by PC gamers.

It mainly depends on the sales and dlc. Everyone keeps asking for free stuff is not helping

3

Halo Wars 2 Vanilla is very similar in Units, Leaders and Factions a Halo Wars 1. The news thing that 343 and CA had intruduced are in the season pass. This game can be better If they worked in a new factions and units since the first day.
If Halo Wars 3 coming in a few years I expect more new content and more innovation.

4

> 2533274943081242;3:
> Halo Wars 2 Vanilla is very similar in Units, Leaders and Factions a Halo Wars 1. The news thing that 343 and CA had intruduced are in the season pass. This game can be better If they worked in a new factions and units since the first day.
> If Halo Wars 3 coming in a few years I expect more new content and more innovation.

New factions seem really likely. The story of HW2 is looking like it will end unresolved with the Flood released on the Ark and the Prometheans possibly taking an interest as well with that Guardian capturing Anders. If 343 wants those factions to have a more central role, it would be very hard not to imagine other factions appearing in a potential sequel.

Plus its something that they can point to as a new feature to justify people buying the sequel. You know, spin the whole thing as “we listened to all the feedback…etc etc and though all these factions would be great”. This is exactly what you got with Battlefront 2. Again, I know nothing about game development, but I think that a lot of these games are kind of working on a crowd fund model where the first title is lackluster but you then pump that money you earned into adding content to the game and selling it as a sequel.

5

I absolutely would love a Halo Wars 3. However, your question was, is Halo Wars 3 likely? In my humble opinion, I think not. From what I could find Halo Wars 2 has sold 290,000 copies. This number was nowhere near 343s target and I will go as far to say the game bombed. I’m sure you have heard people complaining that the game died on PC only a few months after it came out. In comparison, the original Halo Wars sold 2.39 Million copies and even that was considered poor by some people. The Halo franchise is no longer the juggernaut it once was, contributing to the massive difference in sales and interest.

As I said I love Halo Wars 2 but the poor sales combined with a lack of interest does not warrant a reason for a third game. Hopefully, I am wrong, but I just can’t see it happening. Ever. :frowning: (This is my first forum post so please be gentle with me)

6

I would rather see another expansion in the short term.

7

> 2535410208270783;5:
> I absolutely would love a Halo Wars 3. However, your question was, is Halo Wars 3 likely? In my humble opinion, I think not. From what I could find Halo Wars 2 has sold 290,000 copies. This number was nowhere near 343s target and I will go as far to say the game bombed. I’m sure you have heard people complaining that the game died on PC only a few months after it came out. In comparison, the original Halo Wars sold 2.39 Million copies and even that was considered poor by some people. The Halo franchise is no longer the juggernaut it once was, contributing to the massive difference in sales and interest.
>
> As I said I love Halo Wars 2 but the poor sales combined with a lack of interest does not warrant a reason for a third game. Hopefully, I am wrong, but I just can’t see it happening. Ever. :frowning: (This is my first forum post so please be gentle with me)

I had heard that 290k figure. Where does that number come from?

If its accurate that number seems incredibly low. Using VGChartz (which doesn’t include Halo 5 digital sales so its lower).

Halo 3 - 12.12 million sales vs Halo Wars 2.39 million = Roughly 19.71%.

So 1 in 5 Halo 3 players bought Halo Wars.

Halo 5 - 4.77 million sales vs Halo Wars 2 290K sales = Roughly 6%

So only 1 in 20 Halo players bought Halo Wars 2.

So even accounting for Halo 5 selling less than half of Halo 3 that’s still a huge drop on the proportion. Again rough numbers here but that’s pretty shocking. I’am not sure you could use Halo’s declining popularity to explain that because then sales would have fallen in line with the FPS game.

For Halo Wars 2 to have sold in line with the first title vis a vis the shooter you would have needed:

954,000 sales. So they only met 30% of that amount.

I remember seeing one clip after launch with Kevin Grace (who has mysteriously disappeared I’ve noticed; 343 seems to have a lot in common with the Kremlin) and he seemed pretty downbeat or sullen. Whereas before I recall him being very animated and chatty about the game. So perhaps it did bomb.

I mean, total guess here, but they did definitely suggest we might see new factions down the line and now we aren’t; which suggests they may have trimmed down some of their DLC plans due to lower than expected sales. Stuff like only two missions in Spearbreaker and ATN being sold separately. Again, total speculation.

But its strange, there was a lot of interest and chatter about it. Some Youtuber’s talk as if this game saved the Halo franchise. Yet if those numbers are correct, then the game massively undersold.

8

I think Halo Wars DE sold quite well on Steam so there’s a decent market there if they sold Halo Wars 2 on Steam.

Halo Wars 2 sold poor on PC for a variety of reasons e.g Windows Store, lots of performance and stability issues for the first month or two and it being a UWP app.

Microtransactions, the season pass and ATN will bring in a decent amount of revenue. If there was going to be a Halo Wars 3 it’d need to be sooner than later. The current engine and assets could still be used, add some new units for the current 2 factions and add in a 3rd faction and it could do well.

9

> 2533275001759937;8:
> I think Halo Wars DE sold quite well on Steam so there’s a decent market there if they sold Halo Wars 2 on Steam.
>
> Halo Wars 2 sold poor on PC for a variety of reasons e.g Windows Store, lots of performance and stability issues for the first month or two and it being a UWP app.
>
> Microtransactions, the season pass and ATN will bring in a decent amount of revenue. If there was going to be a Halo Wars 3 it’d need to be sooner than later. The current engine and assets could still be used, add some new units for the current 2 factions and add in a 3rd faction and it could do well.

Those are all dependent on buying the base game though. If people don’t buy your game then your DLC sales go down too.

10

> 2533274803587475;7:
> > 2535410208270783;5:
> > I absolutely would love a Halo Wars 3. However, your question was, is Halo Wars 3 likely? In my humble opinion, I think not. From what I could find Halo Wars 2 has sold 290,000 copies. This number was nowhere near 343s target and I will go as far to say the game bombed. I’m sure you have heard people complaining that the game died on PC only a few months after it came out. In comparison, the original Halo Wars sold 2.39 Million copies and even that was considered poor by some people. The Halo franchise is no longer the juggernaut it once was, contributing to the massive difference in sales and interest.
> >
> > As I said I love Halo Wars 2 but the poor sales combined with a lack of interest does not warrant a reason for a third game. Hopefully, I am wrong, but I just can’t see it happening. Ever. :frowning: (This is my first forum post so please be gentle with me)
>
> I had heard that 290k figure. Where does that number come from?
>
> If its accurate that number seems incredibly low. Using VGChartz (which doesn’t include Halo 5 digital sales so its lower).
>
> Halo 3 - 12.12 million sales vs Halo Wars 2.39 million = Roughly 19.71%.
>
> So 1 in 5 Halo 3 players bought Halo Wars.
>
> Halo 5 - 4.77 million sales vs Halo Wars 2 290K sales = Roughly 6%
>
> So only 1 in 20 Halo players bought Halo Wars 2.
>
> So even accounting for Halo 5 selling less than half of Halo 3 that’s still a huge drop on the proportion. Again rough numbers here but that’s pretty shocking. I’am not sure you could use Halo’s declining popularity to explain that because then sales would have fallen in line with the FPS game.
>
> For Halo Wars 2 to have sold in line with the first title vis a vis the shooter you would have needed:
>
> 954,000 sales. So they only met 30% of that amount.
>
> I remember seeing one clip after launch with Kevin Grace (who has mysteriously disappeared I’ve noticed; 343 seems to have a lot in common with the Kremlin) and he seemed pretty downbeat or sullen. Whereas before I recall him being very animated and chatty about the game. So perhaps it did bomb.
>
> I mean, total guess here, but they did definitely suggest we might see new factions down the line and now we aren’t; which suggests they may have trimmed down some of their DLC plans due to lower than expected sales. Stuff like only two missions in Spearbreaker and ATN being sold separately. Again, total speculation.
>
> But its strange, there was a lot of interest and chatter about it. Some Youtuber’s talk as if this game saved the Halo franchise. Yet if those numbers are correct, then the game massively undersold.

I did use VGcharts as my source because it’s literally the only source I could find. However, I have no clue as to how accurate the website or number is. Personally, I do find that number a little too low to be real. However, I still believe the game bombed. There are two reasons why I believe this, the first reason being that Halo no longer owns such a large portion of the market. Halo Wars sold so many copies because it had the huge successes of Halo 2 and 3 to help it. Halo Wars 2, however, could not rely on the booming success of Halo 5 for obvious reasons so it was supported by the first Halo Wars, hence Halo Wars DE. So what we were left with was 343 relying on the 2.39 Million sales of Halo Wars 1 which was already fairly poor for a Halo game.

Secondly, the Xbox One let Halo Wars 2 down. The Xbox 360 is estimated to of sold 86 million units compared to he Xbox One and its 26 to 27 million units. Many people who once enjoyed Halo Wars and Halo 3 have moved onto the PS4 and so the Halo Wars 2 market went with them. I myself would have bought a PS4 if it weren’t for Halo Wars 2 and sometimes I wish I actually had. However, this is all just one guy’s opinion on the subject.

11

> 2535410208270783;5:
> I absolutely would love a Halo Wars 3. However, your question was, is Halo Wars 3 likely? In my humble opinion, I think not. From what I could find Halo Wars 2 has sold 290,000 copies. This number was nowhere near 343s target and I will go as far to say the game bombed. I’m sure you have heard people complaining that the game died on PC only a few months after it came out. In comparison, the original Halo Wars sold 2.39 Million copies and even that was considered poor by some people. The Halo franchise is no longer the juggernaut it once was, contributing to the massive difference in sales and interest.
>
> As I said I love Halo Wars 2 but the poor sales combined with a lack of interest does not warrant a reason for a third game. Hopefully, I am wrong, but I just can’t see it happening. Ever. :frowning: (This is my first forum post so please be gentle with me)

Nice information. Where are you getting the sales figures?

12

What’s weird is I’m seeing a lot of interest on YouTube for the game. So it seems like there are more fans out there than the sales figures would indicate.

That said, my guess is HW3 is unlikely, which is too bad. It’s a great game and I love it.

13

Id like to see a halo wars 3 but we are a long, long way from that. If xbox wants another RTS make a supreme commander 3. The 2nd was awesome on 360.

14

I have no doubt there will be a sequel. Recently MS has been bringing people in with little to no RTS experience to play HW2 and provide feedback on how it can be more pleasing to a wider audience. It’s too late in the product cycle to make any dynamic changes to the current game, so I believe it is being done to shape the next installment.

15

I’m not sure if they will but I really hope they do. Halo Wars 2 introduced an awesome new enemy in the banished along great characters to go with it, and I really want to keep exploring this off shoot and see it merge back to tradition halo story line. I would definitely buy a halo wars 3 and most of the dlc

16

> 2533274806879197;12:
> What’s weird is I’m seeing a lot of interest on YouTube for the game. So it seems like there are more fans out there than the sales figures would indicate.
>
> That said, my guess is HW3 is unlikely, which is too bad. It’s a great game and I love it.

Yeah I noticed 3 or 4 channels popping up based entirely around HW2; entirely separate from the FPS ones.

> 2661949065475413;14:
> I have no doubt there will be a sequel. Recently MS has been bringing people in with little to no RTS experience to play HW2 and provide feedback on how it can be more pleasing to a wider audience. It’s too late in the product cycle to make any dynamic changes to the current game, so I believe it is being done to shape the next installment.

When was this? I hadn’t heard about them bringing people in?

> 2535411018093228;13:
> Id like to see a halo wars 3 but we are a long, long way from that. If xbox wants another RTS make a supreme commander 3. The 2nd was awesome on 360.

That would be amazing. You could really go to town with some of the larger vehicles and spaceships. Krakens, Guardians, Graveminds etc etc

17

whether or not HW3 will happen depends on the cost/revenue ratio.

How much did the game + DLC + MT make?
How much did development cost?
How much will development on the sequel cost?

They could potentially save time and money on making a sequel by re-using the HW2 engine. This would mean that they wouldn’t need to recreate anything that is already in the game.

They should also release HW2 on steam. HW:DE did well on steam so HW2 would likely get a good sales boost if they released it there.

18

> 2661949065475413;14:
> I have no doubt there will be a sequel. Recently MS has been bringing people in with little to no RTS experience to play HW2 and provide feedback on how it can be more pleasing to a wider audience. It’s too late in the product cycle to make any dynamic changes to the current game, so I believe it is being done to shape the next installment.

Huh, that’s really interesting. Where did you get that info? Do you have a link to it?

19

A new game in a few years would be great, but personally the problem will be the player population, like halo wars 1 and 2, after about two months they both dropped a lot and it takes a long time to find a game and if you do it is just against the same people,. So if a new game is done something needs to be done to keep players playing.

20

> 2533274927740213;18:
> > 2661949065475413;14:
> > I have no doubt there will be a sequel. Recently MS has been bringing people in with little to no RTS experience to play HW2 and provide feedback on how it can be more pleasing to a wider audience. It’s too late in the product cycle to make any dynamic changes to the current game, so I believe it is being done to shape the next installment.
>
> Huh, that’s really interesting. Where did you get that info? Do you have a link to it?

You’re just going to have to take my word on it. It isn’t public knowledge, benefits of certain social circles.