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Edited by Double Eagle 30:
6/6/2013 3:25:57 AM
57
The Fall of Halo 4 and the Rise of Destiny .... Online Population Decline & The Ghost of Christmas Future
I felt the need to make a few marketing related comments over on the 343 Forum and got banned until March 29th 4571. Got to love it. :-)
In marketing the initial boost of sales called an inaugural sales spike that appears when an anticipated product hits the market gives the surface impression that its doing well but the retention rate is everything. When you look at the online populations for Reach after being out two years and then look at how fast Halo 4s online player count is dropping its obvious that Halo Reach was a much stronger game. In fact if you superimpose the deterioration curve of the previous Halo issues on where Halo 4 is now then its going to fall to a baseline way short of Reach. This IS a problem. The millions of copies of Halo 4 that sold last November were due to market expectation not the product itself.
Halo 5 is in very serious trouble because the all important retention rate (or lack thereof) reflects long term hard core interest by the base that shows up in the form of demand on the next release cycle. Online activity for Halo 4 has crashed so hard its just hard to believe and we may find that the fraction of base line player counts lost will match what Halo 5 ends up losing in inaugural sales when the new game comes out. Think in terms of a 25-40% loss in sales compared to Halo 4.
As a long time Halo player that purchased Halo 1,2,3,ODST,Reach and 4 the day they came out I must confess when I play Halo 4 I go around annoyed all the time because of the random aspects of the weapons placement on the maps and the random aspects of the ordinance drops among other things. These are the same reasons the game was dumped by Major League Gaming according to Forbes.
The people that I know that have been long time Halo nuts (myself included) are very much looking forward to Destiny because they think it is the expression of what Bungie would have done with Halo if they had been give a free hand. The Halo fan bases still exists and it showed up less that 6 months ago but next time the tsunami of demand that these players produce is likely to show up on Destiny not Halo 5.
References: http://www.halocharts.com/2012/chart/totalpopulation/all
http://majornelson.com/2013/05/01/live-activity-for-week-of-april-22nd/
http://www.gamespot.com/news/halo-4-playtime-fell-below-halo-reach-despite-more-content-6409214
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3 RepliesEdited by Foday Church: 7/11/2013 6:17:18 AMWell spoken story, I've been with Halo since the get-go (since I was 5 xD and im 14 now). It was my very first FPS/Xbox Game I ever played and Halo revolutionized (and possibly) started FPS Genre with its multiplayer. Then Halo 2 revolutionized its multiplayer with XBL, competitive ranking system and every Halo trusty side-kick weapon... the BR. Then when the Xbox 360 released, Halo 3 inherited and improved what joy/fun Halo 2's Multiplayer left behind wih some great maps, DLCs, superb developer support, and 1-50 rankin system and a great story line (also Halo 1 and 2 had a great one too). Then Reach comes around, ppl didnt favor the changes such as the BR being gone, armor abilities, and 1-50 Gone! But Bungie did a smart move with its storyline by making it a prequel to clean up any plot-holes Halo had. And yes I did hate Reach but didnt hate it enough to the point where I wanted to stop playing. Even after beating the -blam!- out of the game from gainin all achievements to beating storyline on solo legendary to endless hours on Firefight. I still had one goal... Inheritor (which I reached on April 6, 2012). and woo Jesus, Inheritor... you needed DEDICATION for dat rank. ppl even went out there way to make YouTube vids bout ranking up to it, finally being "free". Then sadly Halo 4... I had HIGH expectations for this game and it crumbled to nothing. Mistake 1, 343 tried to make the game a casual game for everyone (where everyone feel like winners) which REALLY screwed it up. Mistake 2, taking out firefight, Spartan Ops was indeed ended up a colossal failure for 343 and firefight could've kept Halo 4 alive (hell, it kept ODST alive). Mistake 3, Storyline. For someone who does not keep up with the Halo trilogy will have a hard time trying to figure out what the halo 4 for storyline meant (meaning TOO MANY PLOT HOLES). Mistake 4 Ranking system, really 343? I reached SR 130 within a month (literally) not even a challenge was the worse part. Mistake 5, add things (Such as player-created loadouts) made the game unbalanced as hell cuz there was too many things (variables) that you would know that your opponent had, unlike Halo 3; everyone started out the same. Mistake 6 Ordinances, do I really need to explain? Overall 343 it shows that you did not learn from mistakes that Reach have done (which you had the chance to get rid of) but made worse. So it looks like Halo 4's my last Halo as I close the book and open to a new beginning (Destiny). Sorry if it was too long! :(
