Comments on: 3 Lessons That You Can Learn From the Halo 3 Release

By: GameProducer.Net » Will Halo 3 Sell ONLY 3 Million In 12 Days After Release?

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:00:36 +0000

[...] might sounds like a massive hit, but bearing in mind that Halo 2 sold 2.5 million copies on the release [...]

By: Kartones

Kartones — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:38:14 +0000

Sarcasm: Yeah, it can have lots of online game time played, and novels (lots of games have them), but that, in my opinion, doesn’t makes it better.

Weapons are not surprising nor new. Graphics are behind lots of other titles, and I don’t like the plot. And being so anticipated, in Spain Bungie/Microsoft launched it translated to mexican, which for non-spanish speakers may be nothing serious, but mexican tone and accent are quite different from spain’s. Spanish people can remember Halo 2 as the worst translated/localized game in history.

I don’t want everyone to follow my opinion, actually Halo 2 if I’m correct has been the most pre-ordered game in history, and I have friends who love it.

Maybe if I had just played XBox and not PC I would have had a different point of view… but it’s not the case.

I don’t want to make this post’s comments a “flame war” so if I got you angry I’m sorry, I should have been more polite.

Note: I still play Quake 1, it’s the first game I always install on any new pc.

By: Sarcasm Works

Sarcasm Works — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:05:36 +0000

i agree with Kartones, Halo is such a bad title that there has only been 700million hours of online gameplay logged. Today, people still play “great games” such as unreal on a ritualistic daily basis (unlike “bad games”) while enjoying themselves for every… minute of it. only a mentally disturbed individual lacking thumbs would want to play a game such as Halo because of its week story line and bad graphics (its not like halo has 4 novels out or anything). as i look back on my reply i wonder why it is that i am posting on a topic that i do not care about. its not like i had to research to find this article, and then click on the link and read it, and then have the patients to write about my intamite feelings against halo and its judgement lacking followers.

By: Quicklinking

Quicklinking — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:00:24 +0000

[...] the Game Producer angle, take a look at GameProducer’s article on Halo 3’s release strategy and how you can learn from [...]

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Thu, 17 May 2007 07:42:22 +0000

Kartones, well – it’s true that “best games” are not necessarily the “best selling” games. I believe it was mentioned in the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books that he is “best selling author”, not “best writing author”. Those two can be very different.

And of course different people like to play different games.

By: Kartones

Kartones — Wed, 16 May 2007 18:21:39 +0000

Well, I think there’s a fourth lesson we can learn from the Halo series:
Â· You can sell a bad game better than a good one.

With correct marketing, PR and a semi-desert market (XBox didn’t had too much FPS when Halo appeared, while PC had lots of better FPS), you can turn coal into gold :)

Halo it’s one of the worst FPS I’ve ever played. When I played it on PC was like “uhmm, what’s this?! a bad Unreal-clone”. Even the main character name is stupid… I don’t know how this game sells so well.. except for the reasons I’ve said.

Anyway, it’s just my opinion, but Unreal and Unreal 2 had better plots and graphics.

I still remember when Bungie started it as a PC/Mac game. They did the best decision, going into an unexplored territory, the land of XBox ;)

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Wed, 16 May 2007 17:55:46 +0000

GBGames: Yeh, too much might confuse people. Luckily that’s not the case in casual game space. Just look at today’s casual games. How many comes with a special edition? Umm… zero?

Wazoo: Good one :)

By: wazoo

wazoo — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:32:37 +0000

*quietly tucks Ultima IX: Ascension Dragon Edition box under desk*

By: GBGames

GBGames — Wed, 16 May 2007 14:53:21 +0000

Actually, when I was thinking about how I would release my games a year or so ago, I thought about offering a “Developer’s Edition” which includes the source code to the game.

Along the same lines, fast food restaurants that offer three sizes will find that the middle one sells more. If you go into Wendy’s, you can get a single burger, a double burger, or a triple burger. No one buys the triple (except me once, because I wanted to see if I can handle it. I did.), but now the thinking is, “Huh…I’m not hungry enough for a triple, but I could eat a double.”

Contrast it with restaurants that only offer a single and a double. Now if you’re not that hungry, you’ll consistently buy the single.

It goes from “Do I want to buy something here?” to “Hmm, which one do I want to buy?”

Of course, offering too much choice might just confuse the costumer. See Vista and Linux distributions.

I wonder how many special edition copies of games get sold compared to the basic package. Do they see more people buying the basic edition when they offer a special edition?