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

This is a MS strategy

[superpulpsicle]

MS are going to have this game launch around the same time as Doom III and half-life2 just so people think of it in the same category.

Though I have to admit I tried original Halo on the PC and was terribly disappointed. I think xbox owners are wowed by it cause they don't have much to compare to on that platform. As much as I am pro-PS2, first person shooters belong on a mouse on a PC.

As usual: RTFA

[Babbster]

The projected release date for Halo 2, according to this article, has NOT slipped. 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.

The dates quoted by retailers further than a month in advance are tentative, and they've been so for a long, LONG time (which is part of the reason it's news when a game "goes gold"). I can still recall my "favorite" waiting period back when Microprose kept promising Gunship 2000. The Software, Etc. I frequented at the time had it on the "maybe next month" list for an exceedingly long period of time (at least a year).

What ! Me Hurry ? Ha ha

[leoaugust]

He also said it was unlikely Microsoft would make any major hardware upgrades to the Xbox before the current business cycle ends, as Sony has done with PS2.

Slightly on a Tangent to the Main Topic, but whatever happened to the notion of companies being Agile and Business being a dogfight ? The bottomline is that MS has never been in a hurry. And the point is - do you want to bet money against that paradigm.

Some juicy quotes from Steve Ballmer in April 2003

1. Remember, we brought Windows 1 out in 1983 and we didn't have any real volume until 1991. It took us eight years to get volume. I don't know when we got profit, but it took us eight years to get volume.
2. Take Windows server. We started on it in 1988, but it was probably 1998 before we had real volume, and I don't know when we would have said we had profitability on that product.
3. I feel very good that we have great teams to take MSN and Xbox in exactly those same directions.

"They do their tuning with hardware, we do our tuning with software," he said.

Tuning could be replaced with extortion and the sentence would probably be more true. But what I think MS is missing that few people are expecting and clamoring for FREE hardware (FreePC experiment notwithstanding) but many people are clamoring for FREE software. And the RIAA has helped ingrain that paying for digital bits is putting the money in the wrong pockets. So I think the leverage that MS expects from software is overestimated.
Maybe it is time to turn the ship like they did in 1995.

Yea, true as well.

[Inoshiro]

The only major difference aside from the price on eBay vs. EB is that EB will take back any used game that doesn't work. The policy is pretty flexible because (as you know) they don't really do anything to the games beyond slapping on a price tag.

This does ignore some of the other sides of the equation, though. I tried to sell my Steel Battalion on eBay and got a non-paying high bidder who stalled me long enough that the next highest bidder wasn't interested anymore. eBay still charged me 20$ for selling it, even though I'd not made a penny (in fact, I was even worse off, because I bought the strategy guide I said I'd throw in if bidding went over 200$ USD). I have no such risk when I trade games in at EB -- they're going to give me something the moment I walk through their doors.

Plus, there are a lot of new titles there that can be had for considerably better prices than other stores. EB clears off its shelf space regularly for new product, something other chains (such as Toys'R'Us, which still has Einhander new for 70$ CDN) don't do.

If you're willing to shop around, you can find better deals. EB proves that most people don't care to shop around much on used game prices -- otherwise they wouldn't sell so much volume ;)