Halo Infinite will be a game as a service with micro transactions. We know this after the job posting from Microsoft and tweets from Chris Lee.
I thought Microsoft would embrace Halo’s new stance in the gaming world as a failed continuation of Bungie’s Halo. I thought Halo would become a franchise that would pump out a game after 2-3 years of development, with abandoning the things that made Halo stand out and give into following trends. I accepted that for Halo’s future after Halo 5 and was ready to be a member of a once massive community and buy a Halo game because it was Halo.
But of course that didn’t happen. 343i has taken nearly 5 years with Halo Infinite, even after the backlash to Halo 5’s story, they would buckle down and continue to finish telling it. Given this, and 343i also willing to fix MCC and add more features to it made it seem like maybe Microsoft is backing off and letting 343i call the shots, for the most part. I had a strong feeling after E3 2018’s Halo teaser, that 343i stood up to Microsoft and demanded the time to make up for their past blunders. I thought Microsoft had maybe given an exception to 343i with Halo Infinite, considering Halo is the face of Xbox. I had hope that maybe Microsoft is considering going with Sony’s ‘no micro transactions in first party games’ rule with Halo Infinite.
After the the release of Gears 5, my hopes had been smashed and beaten to the ground. By then, the aforementioned job posting and tweets from Chris Lee about micro transactions had been a news highlight in the gaming world for only about a few days until the next blunder from EA or whatever. Gears 5 has a micro transaction system that exhausts me even though I’ve never touched the game, or know what the system is exactly. But the mere presence of micro transactions in Microsoft’s, arguably, second biggest first party game series (along with the job posting and tweets) really showed to me that Halo Infinite is just going to be another game from 343i, unworthy of the title Halo.
We shouldn’t settle for ‘cosmetic only’ micro transactions because at the core of Halo’s multiplayer experience, for many, is unlocking/achieving armour for their Spartan. By giving players the chance to just throw money at the progression/unlock system to get one of the most coolest armour sets in the game, without having to even touch the multiplayer beforehand, completely disrupts the multiplayer experience for many. Seeing someone in that cool armour could mean either nothing, or something, because you don’t know if they spent real money upfront or unlocked it with skill. This then discourages the players who spent the time and effort to unlock that armour, because any noob can just “unlock” it by putting in their credit card number…
Regardless of whether or not 343i comes up with a revolutionary way to reward players who play the game, and allow players to spend money at the same time, we shouldn’t settle for any micro transactions in Halo Infinite PERIOD. Make a good game, sell the game and people will buy it and praise it, especially since it’s Halo. Microsoft don’t need micro transactions in Halo Infinite, and the excuse that they need them to further support the game; if a game like Halo, owned by Microsoft, needs money from players to become feature complete after release, we’ll that just isn’t the case and never will be. Finish making Infinite feature complete; none of that “we’ll put forge in later and add infection next year”. You’ve been given the time, resources and the patience of the community for 5 years. If Halo Infinite isn’t feature complete at release, that’s just Microsoft trying to get fans to pay for the rest of the development through manipulative micro transactions. We shouldn’t have to pay for a triple A game to finish its development after release and after spending the base $60 on the unfinished product.
So my question to the Halo community; will you stand up once Microsoft reveals Infinite’s micro transaction system? Or will you shrug it off because 343i finally made a Halo game that looks like, Halo?
If you feel like we can’t do anything against Microsoft and the millions of kids with their parents credit cards, you’re wrong. Look at what happened when Star Wars Battlefront 2. Star Wars is a bigger and more popular IP than Halo, with a company in charge of it, Disney, much larger than Microsoft. Yet gamers were able to stand up to Star Wars and Disney and tell them that micro transactions are unacceptable in a triple A game. We won that fight and because of it, Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a much better and healthier game because of it, with the game STILL being supported even with the least intrusive micro transaction system you could have (you can only pay money for crystals which can be used to buy the very few cosmetic items in the game. Not at all acceptable with my standards, but the point is that they aren’t making a huge amount of money off it especially with the lowered player base and simplistic nature of the micro transaction system, yet it’s had new content coming out for nearly two years).
We can either have another triple A Halo game come out, get reviews that will probably be 7 or 8/10 and be forgotten by the larger gaming community in a few weeks. Or we can have Infinite come out and be revered as an example for triple A games without micro transactions, and show Microsoft they can and should make their first party games without micro transactions (just like Sony do with the PlayStation), making it better for the Gears, Forza communities and have Halo be a worthy flagship title again.