Is Population Really Important to MS or 343i?

Games Other Halo
1

I understand that having people playing Halo 4 is important.

I am just wondering how important is it for Microsoft to have individuals play one game for years.

I understand playing Halo does not mean that you are not playing anything else. However, Wouldn’t it be in a publisher’s best interest to have to move on to something else after about 6 month to a year?

In this case, I wonder if MS wants you to play Halo 4, when by November they want you to be playing Xbox 720?

Again, I understand more is better. The more people that play Halo, the better it is for MS.

But they have our money already. And they want to take more of our money with new games.

I sincerely do not want to be rude or insensitive to the daily population thread.

But I do think that they days when people are playing one game regularly for years may be gone.

We know that EA shut down servers after less than 2 years. People are stilling buying FIFA or whatever.

I am thinking that FPS like Halo may be evolving into something similar.

2

Oh, and I do mean to offend MS or 343i by my comments.

All publisher want to make money so that they can continue with new projects etc…

Gamers want to get value for money…

3

> I understand that having people playing Halo 4 is important.
>
> I am just wondering how important is it for Microsoft to have individuals play one game for years.
>
> I understand playing Halo does not mean that you are not playing anything else. However, Wouldn’t it be in a publisher’s best interest to have to move on to something else after about 6 month to a year?
>
> In this case, I wonder if MS wants you to play Halo 4, when by November they want you to be playing Xbox 720?
>
> Again, I understand more is better. The more people that play Halo, the better it is for MS.
>
> But they have our money already. And they want to take more of our money with new games.
>
> I sincerely do not want to be rude or insensitive to the daily population thread.
>
> But I do think that they days when people are playing one game regularly for years may be gone.
>
> We know that EA shut down servers after less than 2 years. People are stilling buying FIFA or whatever.
>
> I am thinking that FPS like Halo may be evolving into something similar.

There is a thread for population already…

4

Publishers only care about week one (sometimes week two) sales of “their” videogame.

5

I am asking a different question that has little to do with a daily tally of population.

6

> Publishers only care about week one (sometimes week two) sales of “their” videogame.

It would be ideal for them to both keep their customers happy, and move on to the next latest and greatest for future consumption.

Upon further thought,

If the publisher is releasing a new game every other year, then population counts are less important.

If the period is 5 years… then…

7

> There is a thread for population already…

As said, this thread should be used for all population discussion.

8

Don’t really want to mention it but I kind of have to. Just look at Call of Duty for example. Avtivision has been banking on that game since 2007 when IW released CoD 4. Six CoDs in row have consistently sold with the climax and cementing of sales coming with MW2.

With all this CoD madness, Microsoft looked at their premiere FPS product and pretty much said, “Why bank on our badass game every 3 years when Actvision can do it yearly.”

So what I’m thinking is, Halo will be released every 2 years. So Halo 5 will be out in 2014 and Halo 6 in 2016. Since Halo didn’t start out as a yearly cash cow, Microsoft would fail if they started releasing Halo’s yearly. The best they can do, is release it every 2 years instead of every 3. Which is a great business move, but a bad one for us the consumer.

Also, the Gears of War series is another great example of this.