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Bungie Celebrates 2-Year Anniversary Of Halo Release
Thanks to Bungie.net for their feature commemorating the second anniversary of Halo's Xbox debut. The piece starts: "What started life as a pseudo real-time-strategy game for the Apple Mac has turned into the number-one-selling Xbox game of all time and a driving force behind much of the console's overall success", and goes on to elicit Ed Fries of Microsoft's remembrances of the scary moments ("Our first E3 press event went REALLY bad. The Xbox didn't even power up. Halo was the grand finale and we had some serious framerate issues and hiccups"), and the Bungie developers, fans and media's favorite anecdotes ("Halo rage is a beautiful thing. My plaster walls are free from damage now, but the amount of controllers I go through is atrocious.")
I was just playing Halo today- it is still a fantastic game, and has legs that will carry it until the end of the Xbox (first version).
Halo has its detractors, but I have yet to play a first person shooter that I ENJOYED more.
Other games may have better graphics, better levels, etc, etc- but overall, Halo is a great game.
No reason to lie.
When - if ever - is the Mac version coming out?
Circumcision is child abuse.
This serves as a bitter reminder of how bungie used to be before being acquire by M$. Instead of continuing their tradition of super-kick-ass indy games (started at first by marathon and eventually myth), they ended up selling incomplete games (Oni) and putting all future effort towards lining M$'s pockets in a sector of the market they shouldn't even be in. And now they are gonna release Halo for the PC? Please. Releasing Halo now is a slap in the face.
Didn't Microsoft say they had some big ass announcement for today? Well, we're waiting.
and people wonder why the pc crowd think it sucks?
i mean really, take the games best gameplay feature away(co-operative), release it 2 years late(a game that depends somewhat on it being 'fresh' too) and wonder why people don't like it. and add a couple of gfx bugs they had 2 YEARS to figure out and test.
i'm sorry but they really should have been doing some improvements to it during that time(the game ain't nothing special even, quite frankly even if unreal 2 is kinda short it kicks halo's ass soooooooo far in the "shoot some aliens in first person with few ai partners" category).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Name one Xbox game that supports multiplayer online gaming without Xbox Live and without some kludgy GameSpy hack.
Thanks.
Nice troll, but try looking at the top 10 Xbox titles and try again. There are some awesome games out on the Xbox these days.
Halo for PC came out a while ago. Please update your template to say "Halo for Macintosh."
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Oops! You altered the entire argument by adding the qualifier "online," which wasn't used in your original post. (There are a number of post-Halo games that support multiplayer via LAN, which is not "online" play.) So basically you're conceding that you can't back up your original point without completely changing it. You lose again, fagmo.
IIRC, Halo was first promised as a PC game, poised to be the next Starsiege/Tribes multiplayer/coop. What's hard to believe is that the Xbox (purportedly) runs a stripped-down version of Windows 2000 and DirectX APIs--- so why couldn't Halo have been ported sooner? Bugs crept in during the port which have yet to be addressed, but again why? The PC graphics are crisper/cleaner than those on the Xbox, but in two years, it could have been polished a lot more. Did Microsoft deliberately hold Halo PC back in order to let it remain the 'killer app' for the Xbox?
How many of them are exclusive to the console?
Of those, how many will remain exclusive?
And then two months later we get a PS2 version and a GameCube version, and everyone stopped talking about Splinter Cell entirely... particularly Xbox fans.
You better hope the performance is better than the Windows version.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
The fact that you need to spend 50$ to play any non-XBox games online kind of ruins the "coolness" of the built in network adapter. At least for me.
Of course, on /. it's far more important to "win" "arguments" than to actually discuss anything. Arrogant prick.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
(Yes it is the parent speaking)
Look buddy, people that see discussion as a way to prove their mental l33tness are arrogant pricks.
It might be wrong of me to be upset at the grandparent and call him a name, but perhaps that's the result of being annoyed, and not because I really love insulting people.
ALERT: Anonymous Coward attempting to engage in rational debate with other Anonymous Cowards, violating six federal ordinances and all known rules of logic. It's too late to save the thread. GPCTA recommends immediate and violent fumigation. STAND BY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
(Yes it is the parent speaking)
You're not the parent! I am!
They stopped talking about it because they had already played it. Exclusives are important, but timed exclusives can work well for everyone. The publisher gets more value out of the dev dollar and the console maker gets a boost for a while. Look at GTA III and Vice City. Also, the PS2 and GC version didn't look nearly as good as the Xbox version and the GC version was painful to play on the standard controller.
It was also the two year anniversary of xbox and the one year anniversary of xbox Live, not that anyone cares. Halo was a launch title for xbox.
Can you point out the logical fallacies for me please?
Is that supposed to be impressive? Tomb Raider is the number-one-selling game of all time on the N-Gage. Is that supposed to be impressive? Now it is only one of two million sellers on the Xbox but that could be taken as praise for Halo or an insult to the Xbox game library overall...
But see- here is the thing that a lot of people fail to understand.
Xbox Live is WORTH the $50.
Going online with Live is easy, seamless, and painless. It works.
Having a DSL connection is more expensive than dial-up. But I pay for it because it is worth it.
I could get television reception using a standard antenna- but to me Dish is worth it.
Sometimes its okay to spend a little money to get something that's good.
No reason to lie.
I was unhappy with the whole idea too, until I tried it out. Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere has a better online gaming service. Very reliable, very browsable, and the lowest kiddie-to-human being ratio I've seen (partly because of the pay nature, and the very real penalty of having an account closed - instead of being to simply create an account with a new name). Plus, have you played online games on some other consoles? Games like SOCOM were completely ruined by rampant cheating - every kiddie online had a GameShark and it worked for online play!
Xbox Live just keeps improving, and does everything right. It will continue to bilk the $50 out of this MS-disliker each year, because it's a great product on all fronts, developed with some true innovation and problem solving (instead of problem creation). If only Windows were developed the same way.
What we really want to know is, have they spent their thirty pieces of silver yet?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If it's not written ONLY FOR XBOX on the game, then it's not an exclusive. I have my copy of Splinter Cell here and it doesn't say ONLY FOR XBOX. It never was an exclusive. It was only released on the XBOX first, like so many crossplatform games come out on the PS2 a month or two before coming out for the Xbox or the GameCube.
Now, you could argue that Halo has ONLY FOR XBOX on it and it came out on the PC, but I think that 2 years exclusivity for a game is justifies the ONLY FOR XBOX because these days there are better FPSs people might want to play on their computer, it's not as if I was ripped of my money, since there are plenty of great games I can play on my Xbox that I can't play anywhere else like Amped, Project Gotham Racing (and the sequel which comes out this week), KOTOR (well, it just went gold last week, but hey, I've been playing this game since july and it's one of the best RPGs I ever played, and best SW game ever) and a few others.
Okay. Let's look.
1. Grand Theft Auto III+Vice City
Wow. I guess Xbox fans really want to play PlayStation 2 games.
2. Halo
No surprise here.
3. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
More licensed pap that's available on every game system and is equally crappy on all.
4. Madden NFL 2004
Whoop-dee-doo. A crappy American football franchise that stupid jocks will buy every year for any platform.
5. Tony Hawk's Underground
More boring skater games. Available on every system, equally crappy on all of them.
6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3
Shouldn't that be "Rainbow 9"? Seriously, though, this game hasn't changed since the first installment was released on PC six years ago.
7. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Oh goody, another licensed game for dumbass 11-year-olds who don't know the difference between SF and Sci-Fi. Available on every other system, too.
8. NBA Live 2004
They ought to call this game NBA Rapist 2004. At least then it would be entertaining to a select few perverts.
9. The Simpsons Hit & Run
For when Grand Theft Auto III is too real. Available everywhere else.
10. True Crime: Streets of LA
For when Grand Theft Auto III isn't real enough. Boring and formulaic.
Please. Lest us forget that $ony and, um, $intendo aren't exactly laissez faire either. They've done their share of buying out (and not just console devs), and while certainly not as noticably large as either Bungie or Rare, they are guilty as charged. I guess what you're saying is that Microsoft should stick to PC applications, right? Well, Sony should stick to walkmen, and Nintendo to playing cards. Welcome to the video game industry jube. Maybe if you'd bought more dreamcasts, we wouldn't have lost the only pure video game hardware maker. Oh wait, you're a PC l33t gamer. Just know that Dreamcasts were cool, and that you should've bought more.
And so M_S_ bought out Bungie. Whoopie. I'd think Bungie far more qualified to decide what's best for Bungie than, say, you, and Bungie doesn't seem too upset about the whole deal. In fact, they've said in every interview I've read with them regarding MS that MS leaves them well enough alone, save for random visits by Ed Fries and Ken Lobb who just walk around with their jaws on the floor and then leave. Which seems to work out fairly well, since Take 2/GODgames bugged the hell out of Bungie and the result of that was the abysmal pre-MS Oni.
Microsoft saw an opportunity to snag a great game franchise, and they took it. Why is that inherently evil? Wouldn't anyone else have done the same thing? Don't think for a minute that someone at Sony wasn't kicking themselves in their proverbial business casual slacks for not having bought Bungie first.
What's the difference between super-kick-ass indy (sic) games, and super-kick-ass non-indie games? If both are super-kick-ass, what's your problem? Shouldn't good game developers like Bungie be rewarded with the big bucks only the big dogs can cough up? I'm all for indie gaming (hey, I bought Mutant Storm and Starscape), but I'm more for indie gaming developers making it good than indie game developers making $1000 a game. So should you. Return to your comraderie of anti-M$ fanboys at main.slashdot.org, and save the karma for gamers who care about the games. And thanks in advance.
If by "sucks" you mean an overall 85% rating, then I guess you're right. I'll concede that the PC version needed some work, but I think sucks is too strong a word. Add in whatever you mean by "improvements" and the co-op to Halo PC logistically means re-writing the entire code for the single player campaign. Essentially, you're looking at at least another year in development, which is to say another year of PC fanboys whining. And I would venture to say that nearly every single one of those reviewers would completely disagree with your assertion that Unreal 2 kicks Halo's ass. My guess is that you just haven't played Halo. And I also guess that means that by Unreal 2 kicking Halo's ass, you mean getting a %78 percent at gamerankings. Whatevs.
A note. I beta tested Halo for the PC and had somewhat of an inside look at the process, and it was a bitch to port. People have been whining about how their PC is soooo much better than Xboxes since before the Xbox even came out, but the fact of the matter is that the GPU within the Xbox is so well tailored to pixel shaders that it made porting the game from the Xbox to PC extremely difficult. Bungie did a great job with Halo, but they did do it rather quickly, so unraveling all the Xbox code for PC was a monumentous task for gearbox that they pulled off brilliantly. I wish you could see how far they came from the original alphas.
I said top 10 scoring anon troll. Try again and then report back.
At the risk of repetition, "Good grief." You act as if "this business of console makers buying large, successful developers/publishers outright" is a new thing. It's not. It's been happening since day one. You've suddenly noticed it because you're most likely (as I once was) solely a PC gamer, and this is the first notably large buyout of a PC game developer. If you're not, than you haven't been paying attention. My guess is that you haven't noticed this spirit of aquisition up to this point because the video game industry was largely dominated by Japanese companies who bought out - surprise - other Japanese companies. Microsoft, obviously coming from a much more PC-knowledgable position - *"bought out" Bungie. As far as being "locked out," welcome to the console world. Again: a day one behavior (biggest case in point in recent history: GTA3 - why is releasing that once exclusive PS2 game on PC not an insult, but Halo is, btw?).
I would specifically argue that developing for one console actually enhances creativity, not stifles it. It's easier to develop for a single platform than it is to target 2 or 3, or in the case of a PC technically an infinte number of hardware configurations That's a best case scenario, of which I think Bungie exemplifies. The worst case scenario is that the now-bought-out-company produces crap (say, that crappy Microsoft first party psuedo-RPG that started with an A). Basically, I think it would be fair to say that a creative company will create more creative games, and a non-creative company will inevitably create crappier games. Ooooo.
So sure, it's all cool and hipster to have indie game houses, but let's be frank. It's all about the benjamins. These indie guys would like nothing more than to do what they're doing, but to have driven to work in a Dodge Viper rather than a 1985 Ford Escort that's 3rd gear works only half the time.
Two more things. First of all, who died and made you Ms. Cleo of Bungie? How do you know that Bungie's "glory days" are behind them (Oni-cough-cough)? Halo was fantastic. If Halo 2 completely bombs, I might agree with you. But since neither of us has played that, I doubt you can justifiably say that. Bungie and MS have both said that they leave each other alone, so Bungie is doing what they would've done, except that a) it's for the Xbox, and b) they drive to work in Dodge Vipers. Why is that bad?
Secondly, if you're so adverse to playing good games merely because they might be on a certain console, consider yourself a shameful PC fanboy. You might be slightly more articulate than the forum fanboy trolls (that is to say, using multi-syllabic words and not using wtf once), but the spirit is the same. Shame on you. Good games are good games, whether they have Microsoft on the front or GarageGames. Get over your indie-fetish and have some fun.
* Isn't it odd that it's always MS doing the buying, not Bungie doing the selling? Maybe - and stick with me here - maybe Bungie wanted to be bought out and have lots of cash for doing something they love. Just a thought.
As a momentary exercise in completely extraneous hypotheticals, and to drive the point home with much more force (given the audience), imagine for a moment that MS had decided to acquire Squaresoft instead of Bungie ... *shuter*
Oh, you mean like Sony bailing Squaresoft out of the post-movie-blues and eventually becoming the second largest shareholder of Squaresoft? That kind of completely extraneous hypothetical?
Actually, the Xbox has 4 confirmed million plus selling games, worldwide, on it.
Halo (launch)
Dead or Alive 3 (launch)
Project Gotham Racing (launch)
Splinter Cell (released November 2002)
Still, for all the talk about how much software is sold for the Xbox, you'd figure there's be more than 4 titles which have sold over a million units worldwide; 3 of which are launch titles, and the fourth released a year ago.
The GC has been out for the same time in North America, and has something like 8-10 million plus selling titles (worldwide), and the PS2 has to be pushing 2 dozen or so million plus sellers (worldwide) since it's launch by now, if not more.
Thursdae
""What started life as a pseudo real-time-strategy game for the Apple Mac has turned into the number-one-selling Xbox game of all time"
Yeah that game that was soo cool it was never released after bungie sold out.
Well you need to pay 50 bucks for the ps2 adapter/headset. 50 bucks if 50 bucks... granted its a one time fee for ps2.