Halo 2 Release Date Slips?

George Bailey writes "Forbes.com/Reuters has posted an interview with Microsoft's Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach, who provided some vague hints in regards to the launch of flagship Xbox FPS sequel, Halo 2. In his own words: 'We're going to ship it when it's ready...That might be the first half of 2004, it might not. You have to be careful with franchises like this.' The current projected release date is, or was, April 1st 2004, according to game retailers." Update: 01/11 07:46 GMT by S : Several commenters point out that 'slipped' is in the eye of the beholder: "What I get from Mr. Bach is that they don't have a firm release date at all - hell, they've probably never had one at all - and they're avoiding a firm commitment to consumers on the issue."

Comments

Re: when it's ready

[Quixotic Raindrop]

As much as I hate Bungie (well, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones) for selling out, they have always released their software when they were ready. I am assuming that Bungie is still doing Halo, of course ... but with Marathon, they tried releasing it before it was ready (when it was still just Pathways into Darkness II), and it got slammed at MacWorld. I think they learned their lesson. I'm glad to see that some of Bungie's ass-kick-ness is still left.

Really, no firm date? No surprise.

[Inoshiro]

Last year, if you walked into an EB and grabbed their new release binder, you'd find they had release dates for Duke Nukem Forever and Team Fortress 2.

This was around the time when they had a release date of June 6th, 2003 for Halo 2.

After a couple of months passed, the dates for DNF and TF2 were deleted (they had probably sat at June 6th, 2003 for a looong time), and Halo 2 was moved to April 1st, 2004. Fable used to be listed as January 16th, 2004 -- it's not coming out anytime soon, either.

Unfortunately for the gaming public, EB doesn't have any way to signal that they don't have a relatively firm release date for an item. The closest they get is when they have a release date with a 0$ price on it. Anything else could be firm in stone, or entirely hypothetical -- it's just there to generate preorders so thay have an idea of what the demand for the game is going to be, and thus how to ship things. After all, EB's entire profit structure is based around carrying the minimum number of each title in order to maximize the number of different titles they can carry (thus beating the crap out of Wal*Mart for selection).

Re: when it's ready

[Mike Mentalist]

Anyone who says that they hate a company for 'selling out' really has no idea of what goes on in the real world.

Re: when it's ready

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to point out that Bungie had *always* said that Halo would come out for Mac/PC.

I still think it's rather inexcusable that they didn't release it sooner, but my feeling is that MS pressured them into doing this, as Halo was one of the top X-Box games.

Also, by some people's accounts (no official ones, but then there are no official accounts on this that I'm aware of), Bungie was in serious financial trouble. With Oni being constantly delayed and looking more and more dissapointing, and similar things happening with Halo (do you remember that Halo was going to be 64 players/server, with long-scale battles? Destructible environments/distortable terrain? Much more open-ended and free-flowing gameplay? Third-person? The ability to play as Covenant or Humans (at least in MP)?) I do, and I feel fairly confident that this didn't happen because of the X-Box - the E3 2000 demos look almost identical to Halo on the X-Box), I've heard the buyout by MS to be made out as a saving grace for a company on it's last legs of funding.

Lastly, I don't really understand this whole "selling out" thing. If somebody comes up and offers me a bucket of money, as long as it doesn't violate my moral principles, then sure, I'll take it. Microsoft came to Bungie with a bucket of money and said "We'll give you this if you become one of our studios and make Halo an X-Box game." It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and doesn't really seem to violate any principles that I'm aware of.

Of course, I could be wrong. Nobody really knows why they did it. And nobody probably ever will. The only thing that really matters is that they make good games, and so far they've still been doing that.

Re: when it's ready

[TwistedSquare]

I, personally, don't blame them. Bungie are a lot more famous now than before joining with Microsoft, and Halo became pretty much the killer app for the X-Box. It's like having a go at a football player for signing for a team in a higher division who will pay more - loyal followers will be angry but that player wouldn't have wanted to miss the opportunity.

Re: when it's ready

[edwdig]

Microsoft came to Bungie with a bucket of money and said "We'll give you this if you become one of our studios and make Halo an X-Box game." It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and doesn't really seem to violate any principles that I'm aware of.

Most of Microsoft's money comes from illegal abuse of monopoly powers. See the recent anti-trust trial and the 1995 consent decree. Read the details of the consent decree - that's why Windows is around today. If Microsoft didn't do those things, then mentioning Windows to a casual computer user today would get you the same blank stare you'd get by mentioning, say, BeOS. We'd all be using OS/2, GEOS, GEM, Desqview, BeOS, or something else instead of Windows.

MS earned their money by illegal means. As far as I'm concerned, it's unethical to take that money.

Probably this has to do with the PSP launch

[AzraelKans]

MS is probably trying to save their best card to counterstrike the PSP launch. After all, they can afford it. Anyway they are pretty much covered with triple A titles for the rest of the year (or at least the most important dates).

Ninja Gaiden/DOA online (march/april/summer(?))
Doom 3 (october/november/Halloween)
Halo 2 (December)

So yes, I would expect Halo 2 to be released until december, cry, laugh, cringe about it, then accept it, it is the best time for the title to ship.

p.s.
IMO theres as much chance of Half life 2 coming out this year as Duke nukem forever, I wish they could prove me wrong but I pretty much doubt it.