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Halo Has Not Met Financial Expectations - Brad Sams
- Thread starter Pelta88
- Start date
Mercenary09
Member
But..but..it had over 20 million players thanks to Game Pass. Xbox fans say that is so amazing and the franchise is back. This is why I don't give two shits about a game having so many players and why Sony isn't putting their games on a subscription service day 1.
I just buy games that I like today that are out today. I see no need to look at the future as to how I dictate anything. If Sony announced they were going to turn Naughty Dog into a remaster studio down the road, but released Uncharted 5 next week, I wouldn't change the fact that I am buying Uncharted 5.
And maybe I am reading you wrong. But if someone didn't like a game today and didn't buy it today, the developer won't make it again tomorrow.
And yet Forza Horizon 5 was on Game Pass day one, and also had record SALES (not just players) for all of the Forza franchise, and scored amazingly with critics. It's not "Game Pass", it's the developer and their games. Game Pass nor PS+ dictate the game quality. And it's not just "Xbox" fans. PS/Xbox/Nintendo fans like me look at the entire picture.
MacReady13
Member
Sales?!? What is that when you have Game Pass? They don't need sales. They have probably logged in 200 billion hours on the game so I mean, isn't that the metric of success Microsoft goes for now with their subscription model? Since when do they care about profits for games? Or do sales matter now?
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Everyone assumed before we knew much about that, that this would have been a given. But, nope.
Odd, really.
Jaybe
Member
Give us some data to back this up. FH4 apparently sold over 10 million units? FH5 sold how many? Doesn’t seem to be any data on this. Just like Halo Infinite. The only records from FH5 were the ‘pay to unlock early edition buyers beating FH4 (deduced from player count before official launch), and players count for first week and after. Nothing on FH5 sales.
MacReady13
Member
Yet Halo didn't. Halo- the biggest franchise Microsoft has failed to make an impact. The game everyone was saying will show us doubters that game pass will be worth having for this game alone! Fuck these sub models- you want a game, then BUY IT! Halo shows when you cater for a game on game pass it can fail miserably.
Says the guy who tried to call Returnal a flop and below sales expectations based on nothing yet defends Halo and Outriders as above expectations even though there is news to the contrary.Do you know how much money Halo has made, or how much money it will make in the future (directly or indirectly)? Of course you don't, yet you call the game a flop. Then you move on to claiming that Gamepass doesn't work because one game that was supposed to be an online service failed to produce content on time. Both things have nothing to do with each other, but you still use it to shit on Gamepass.
I know this thread has been a bit of a trollfest for blue socked individuals, but at least try to come up with some decent arguments
But the game that was on Game Pass is the campaign, which did great. Great meta scores, and well received by gamers. The failure, which is the F2P model that they did with the multiplayer, doesn't have anything to do with Game Pass.
Give us some data to back this up. FH4 apparently sold over 10 million units? FH5 sold how many? Doesn’t seem to be any data on this. Just like Halo Infinite. The only records from FH5 were the ‘pay to unlock early edition buyers beating FH4 (deduced from player count before official launch), and players count for first week and after. Nothing on FH5 sales.
MacReady13
Member
Let's be honest- they made the game for online. It was to get people on to game pass. You know that and I know that. It was mentioned here countless times. It has been a failure not only for Microsoft but for Game Pass. A "free" game that no one is playing not only in single player nor multi player.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
It is strange to see a mental gymnastics leap to blame Halo Infinite's problems on Game pass when it was obvious that the live service part of the game was severely lacking. Live service games minus the live service support leads to financial failure. It's not super complicated. Expect this game to take a similar track to titles like Sea of Thieves and Destiny 1 and 2. Slow start but significantly better as time goes on. This is more likely than ever now that 343i has new leadership.
The live service part of the game is f2p and you didn't need Game pass at all to play it. The financial state of this game has NOTHING to do with Game pass.
That would be a good start. But the rest of your comment veered left of that.
Halo is #16 most played game on Xbox right now out of 5000 plus games.
Halo is # 13 here: Popular Xbox games — September 19th, 2022 (trueachievements.com)
Halo is # 9 & # 10 here: Xbox Game Pass Games Library | Xbox
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Not good enough for their flagship franchise. Given the effort expended its not the desired result.
Jaybe
Member
Nice try. He’s comparing FH4’s (released Sept 28, 2018) Sept 2018 sales to FH5’s (released Nov 9, 2021) Nov 2021 sales. 3 days vs 3 weeks. What’s FH5’s lifetime to date sales? And are they above FH4’s supposedly 10 million units? FH5 is still below Horizon Forbidden West in the latest 12 months chart.
Sybrix
Member
Right.
Halo is Xbox and if its not even hitting top 10 most played on the system, something has gone very badly wrong.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
You're right it's not good enough. Maybe they should release co-op and forge and get a regular cadence of new content for single and multiplayer. Good to see there have been no comments from MS that the game was good enough or that they would no longer be supporting the title.
And yet the member said "A "free" game that no one is playing not only in single player nor multi player."
Yet:
Halo is #16 most played game on Xbox right now out of 5000 plus games.
Halo is # 13 here: Popular Xbox games — September 19th, 2022 (trueachievements.com)
Halo is # 9 & # 10 here: Xbox Game Pass Games Library | Xbox
Out of 5000+ games and being 9/10/13/16 and 10s of millions of gamers playing on Xbox One/Xbox Series X, that leads me to believe that there is more than "zero" people playing the game.
No try on my part. I was just posting the most current facts available to us. Not sure what HFW has to do with anything? (great game also)
Jaybe
Member
FH4 has likely sold more than HFW which has definitively sold more than FH5. Therefore, FH4 has sold more than FH5 and your statement is wrong or at least unproven (from a lifetime to date perspective).
MacReady13
Member
For Halo, these are shocking numbers. People today still play the original Halo games religiously. Not so with Infinite. Nice try but no...
MacReady13
Member
The game was marketed as FREE on Game Pass by many millions of Game Pass devotees! It is ok now for people to say it has nothing to do with Game Pass when it's a failure?!?
Of course FH4 has sold more than FH5. They were talking periods aligned. FH4 came out 4 years ago.
Halo Infinite is #16 most played game on Xbox.com right now out of 5000 plus games.
Halo Infinite is # 13 here: Popular Xbox games — September 19th, 2022 (trueachievements.com)
Halo Infinite is # 9 & # 10 here: Xbox Game Pass Games Library | Xbox
Halo MCC is #26 here: Popular Xbox games — September 19th, 2022 (trueachievements.com)
Halo MCC is # 18 here: Xbox Game Pass Games Library | Xbox
Halo MCC is not even in the top 50 here on Xbox.com right now out of 5000 plus games
Please feel free to post back here when you have anything factual to share.
Yup, the CAMPAIGN was marketed as included with Game Pass. The multiplayer was marketed as FREE TO PLAY and was released BEFORE the campaign, free to play. Not on Game Pass. MS never uses FREE in their Game Pass marketing. Please stop spreading inaccuracies.
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Jaybe
Member
Yeah tons of sales in years 2 through 4 right???
Me too, to both points, but the thing about GP is that you don't buy games.
Crew511A
Member
I don't think that's the big take away here. If you're going to do GaaS, you need to provide players with a reason to keep swiping their credit card. 343 really hasn't done that.
Jaybe
Member
MacReady13
Member
Some can see it whereas others are delusional. Either way this was THE game for game pass. Massive flop.All you’ve done is proveMacReady13 ’s point that Halo is pretty much irrelevant now.
Dr.brain64
Member
Xbox Has Not Met Any Financial Expectations
DarkMage619
$MSFT
The failure of this title was related to the f2p portion of the game. You know the part where people can buy battle passes and skins for their spartan? That portion of the game did not get many new maps and won't be getting core features until November. If 343i had gotten 3 month seasons going and regular new maps and modes it would have been far more successful. None of that has anything to do with Game pass.
Mercenary09
Member
Cool one game. Gears 5 is another one that failed just like Halo. Game didn't sell well b/c anyone who wanted to play it did it on Game Pass and no one really talked about it after the first month. I bet Microsoft didn't make any money on it either
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Mercenary09
Member
It had a big first month but how did it do afterwards? Seems to me those wheels fell off the car quickly. It certainly isn't in the top best selling games over the past 12 months when several newer games are and that's the US market where Xbox has the biggest fanbase. It no doubt looks far worse everywhere else in the world.
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Rhazer Fusion
Member
Yet people think a subscription based future with high budget AAA games is a great idea for the industry and not detrimental to the companies and games? Reasons like this is why a subscriptions based future scares me.
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fallingdove
Member
I see more people arguing that Game Pass is failing and Halo Infinite’s inability to meet financial expectations is proof of that. AAA marquee title, biggest launch in franchise history, 20M players…fails to meet financial expectations.
If I am a 3rd party and not getting a fat Game Pass check up front, this is more than enough reason to steer clear of a Day One Game Pass release.
LavitzSlambert
Member
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your post, but I think what you mentioned are all examples of MS being MS.
1. The game diversity, they view it as a checklist. A selling point that they have the bases covered, so to speak. They do this with Windows too, where they say if it runs on a computer they want to have it running on Windows.
2. There’s no dispute about the platform or tech, MS is great at this. It’s their core strength as a company, and it always has been. Monetization though? You don’t seem to understand, the examples you mentioned are not MS being a good steward, it’s MS competing from a position of disadvantage. Have you ever heard of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? This is a pattern of MS strategy we have seen in everything they do, and I see it happening with Game Pass right now. It always seems like a great thing, and at first it is. But slowly MS runs the competition out of town and as soon as you’re left alone with then, the squeezing begins. You say look what they did with XLG, I say look what they TRIED to do with XLG. It took a large outcry to backtrack that decision, but you could tell it was the plan they intended all along. How quickly people forget simply because MS “listened” to the fans.
3. Publisher of the year is really a matter of opinion, and it occurred in one of the weakest years in gaming history. I won’t take a victory from MS, credit is given where it’s due. And I won’t say anything ill about the dev teams, there is talent there. What I am talking about is MS’s tendency to interfere and make IT management style decisions that impact their teams’ creative output. It’s clear that release schedule, box checking, and monetization were their most interesting topics during Halo Infinite’s development and post release window.
I just wish Nadella and the rest of the leadership team (outside Phil) showed they care at all about gaming. Right now it seems like Phil genuinely wants to create the biggest and best gaming experience, with all the hit titles. The problem is his funds come from Big Business IT Management and every win he gets comes with a catch. We’ll let you spend all of this money on studios and exclusives, but you need to hit some metrics for us too. Here are your user engagement metrics and subscriber quotas. Strict deadlines and requirements. I’m not saying other companies don’t do this too, but MS takes it to another level and it seems to affect their output more than the competitors.
LavitzSlambert
Member
Kinect is a great example. They really pushed that hard, because they saw what Nintendo was doing and they had to have a piece of it. Forget that they had no clue why they were in the segment and no true vision for it, gaming wise. mcdonalds.jpg
Your statement about watching Nintendo and Sony is spot on. Here’s the thing, Phil watched them. We gamers watched them. I can bet not a single other MS exec watched them - they don’t care! Gaming is another feature to them, and a way to build an audience and get them into the MS ecosystem. Do you remember way back when Halo 2 launched? They put Halo on PC, and then they actually launched Halo 2 on PC as well. But the catch was (and there’s always a catch with MS) that you needed Windows Vista in order to play. They had just launched the OS and it was a dumpster fire, and part of the plan was to release Halo 2 with that requirement in order to woo adoption of Vista.
Phil needs to play by corporate’s rules using their play book, or else he gets benched. No funding, no Xbox. But until MS starts really treating Xbox as a core competency of the company and not just another business segment. How does Xbox factor into how they view the business? Look no further than their financial reports that lump Xbox into the More Personal Computing segment - along with Windows, Surface, and Bing search. Yup, that tells a lot about how MS views Xbox. It’s sad because gaming is easily the biggest part of that business segment, but it gets shunned in comparison to their cloud and enterprise segments. Nintendo and Sony don’t have that problem, which is a big reason why they have been more successful.
Anyway I am beating a dead horse and preaching to the choir, but maybe others will see this and engage in some more discussion.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Halo Infinite multiplayer mode is f2p. It is not on Game pass. That is the mode MS was planning of making most of its money on. You think Epic will pull Fortnite off Game pass because of poor financial performance? I don't because free to play games have nothing to do with Game pass.
You seem to be stuck in the 90s. The EEE thing largely revolved around Windows. Windows has nothing to do with Xbox and the leadership that was in place during that era has all left. You still think Bill Gates is CEO?
I don't care why MS offers good value all I care is that they do. MS of today is nothing like MS of the 90s and Xbox is offering a superior value to any other platform holder this generation. If that changes I'll reassess but for now I'm going to continue to support the platform that gives me the most bang for my buck.
I hold companies accountable for what they are doing now not what executives did decades ago. There are companies right now raising console and game prices in the middle of an inflationary period. I hope you hold them accountable just as strongly as you hold MS accountable for things that happened 30 years ago no longer taking place with people no longer at the company.
EDMIX
Member
This.
If such a thing was such a massive hit, you'd already see that with that subscription service. The easy answer is, Sony already has many IP that move well past 20 million plus without needing to give the shit away for free, why the fuck would they change that?
So...Sony, Nintendo, they have no reason to devalue their brand or their massive sellers to beg for free 2 play shit, thats now become the end of the road for dying IPs lol Look at BF 2042, when that game flopped, F2P was the thing everyone kept saying to save it as if that magically is going to have it do gangbusters. The game first must be good, it must be WORTH someone buy it, to be worth someone's time as a free thing. Look at APEX, its a great game, if they charged full price, I can see that IP selling beyond even Titanfall, thus as a free to play thing, it was successful because it could stand on its own even if it was full price. If a IP is failing in sales at full price, giving it away for free won't magically change all of its issues or something, it might put them on greater notice for all to see if anything. So...I don't subscribe to this "free 2 play da future" mindset as I don't believe price or cost is the biggest issue with some of theses games.
I say this as a person that bought BF 2042 day 1, enjoy they game even today and would still tell you F2P wasn't going to change whats happening with it. Those that go F2P, seem to do it cause they fucking have to, not because its some amazing thing and they just can't WAIT for all to play, its cause they can't fucking grow a user base without removing that barrier.
We all joke about Nintendo selling full priced ports or Sony charging $70, but when you are market leader and move 20 plus million, you can. You have something in demand, of a quality that is rare in the industry and have no need to give it for free.
Thats MS's issue right now btw. If they had any IP that was moving those units, the wouldn't need to be trying to sell some great value subscription thing to beg for users. Theres no way in hell MS goes from moving 20 to 30 million on some IP, to giving it for free, if their games moved that number, you would never see this whole day and date thing with Gamepass, its because they were never moving Sony and Nintendo numbers in software in the first place.
GamesDontSuck
Member
As I completed halo infinite I sat there for 25 minutes watching the credits as thousands of names appeared on screen.
Even if it wasn't on GamePass it would have had to sell alot of copies to cover that much.
Even if it wasn't on GamePass it would have had to sell alot of copies to cover that much.
Seems to have done extremely well. Not only just sales, but overall with over 20 million players in 10 months time. And of course we know that is the metric that MS is focused on. More importantly, the game scored amazingly, and my experience after completing the game was also 9/10. Visually, Playground Games is on another level compared to other developers out there. Their attention to detail is off the charts. It's no wonder it won best racing game, best accessibility, best audio design, and best sports game.
Nailed it^
Gears 5 failed? Wha? Halo failed? Now you are just being silly. This isn't even worthy of a response.
It's really difficult for a AAA game that took 4-5 years to make to meet financial expectations while being f2p or Gamepass.
The only way to accomplish that is to be a multiplayer GaaS title with millions of users regularly playing and paying for new contents.
That didn't happen here because of the incompetence and mismanagement of 343i.
The only way to accomplish that is to be a multiplayer GaaS title with millions of users regularly playing and paying for new contents.
That didn't happen here because of the incompetence and mismanagement of 343i.
Bernd Lauert
Banned
Yeah, that's the narrative. Sadly, this narrative doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
GHG
Member
This is the sticking point. How on earth do you have the biggest launch and 20m players but yet fail to meet financial expectations?
They only have themselves to blame, there was no need to make the multiplayer f2p (could have even carved out the MP and made that an up front fee like they did with the SP), there was no need to launch the game day one on gamepass. They did both. This is a franchise that historically has had no issue selling millions of copies within the space of a couple of months, why not even attempt to tap into that? Even a 3-6 month lag would have done the trick.
This model will be brutal for games that don't sell well and/or have profitable ongoing monetisation methods (which is a whole other issue in itself).
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DForce
NaughtyDog Defense Force
Says the person who shows up in every single sales thread just to prove a Sony game flopped.Do you know how much money Halo has made, or how much money it will make in the future (directly or indirectly)? Of course you don't, yet you call the game a flop. Then you move on to claiming that Gamepass doesn't work because one game that was supposed to be an online service failed to produce content on time. Both things have nothing to do with each other, but you still use it to shit on Gamepass.
I know this thread has been a bit of a trollfest for blue socked individuals, but at least try to come up with some decent arguments
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