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Halo 2 Sells 5 Million Units
A witty GameIndustry.biz writer: "Avid gamers clock up 28 million hours shooting each other in the face on Live". They have word that Halo 2 has surpassed 5 million units sold through. The sequel beat the record achieved by the original game, which took 2 years to achieve.
I'm not at all surprised. I don't know anyone who has an Xbox and wasn't psyched about getting this game. I was psyched as well, but now I can't stop playing World of Warcraft.
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From what I've read previouslu, Halo 2 outsold the entire run of Halo 1 in the first day of sales.
I now I am being as trollish and redundant about this as much as I am about the stupid 1-button touchpad on apple laptops.....
But how can anyone play a first person shooter on a gamepad? Absolute motion axis suck for aiming. Anyone who says otherwise is a console system apologist, and in denial.
More on-topic: is it out for PC yet. Because I might want to try to wine it. People keep telling me it is good.
Flame on! And do not forget to mod this -1 for the blatant stab at one of only 2 reasons why I do not want a Powerbook.
badness 10000
28 million hours spent (that's just the online play). we are young and able-bodied and intelligent. what are our capabilities? this doesn't make sense. i was raised with video games; they are fun. but this just doesn't make sense. what could we accomplish?
It took the first one two years because it sucked.
Modern console gamers seem to have forgotten this. Whenever I see a game reviewed as a potential "Halo killer", I weep for the reviewer, who clearly has Alzheimer's.
Do people remember the "buzz" about the X-Box launch and Halo. Sure, those people who had wrapped their egos so tightly into Microsoft's success claimed that rainbows were coming out their asses, but the more realistic gamers sighed with a "Well, I guess at least Halo's not bad." Halo's most shining characterastic was that most of the other launch titles were dreadful. The key word in Halo was repitition. You'll see the same enemies over and over again. You (and they) will use the same tactics over and over again. The levels brought their own level of boring repetition, so painful that Penny Arcade compared it to pounding nails through their dicks.
Halo was redeamed by its multiplayer which I understand is very good. I must yield that it had exceptional control for a console based first person shooter. But Halo took a long time to move 5 million units because the single player simply wasn't compelling. It only did as well as it did at first because there were no other real options. Later on multi-player became popular.
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I've had it since it came out and still haven't played it on Live yet. Then again, I haven't finished the campaign...
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
probably because everyone that has an xbox only had one game, they've been wanting another for a long time now.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Microsoft acquires license to print money.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
World of Warcraft just sold a record number of units in their first day. Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3 have all just hit the store shelves. With so many awesome games out there that people are buying so often I wonder if this is a sign of people being otherwise discomforted by life.
Is there any historical evidence showing leisure activities blossom when so much else in the world seems to be in disarray?
Direct away from face when opening.
Eh, counterstrike (old counterstrike) alone has 2x as many player minutes in the last MONTH than Halo 2 has had since it came out.
See http://steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html for details.
(And steam has had over 2x the amount of unique players, in the last month than halo 2)
My email addy? should be easy enough.
The Halo 2 DVD has been the greatest game to rest my drink on since Halo 1.
The Halo 2 DVD has been the greatest thing to rest my drink on since Halo 1.
Attendance at the roman collusium was at its peak right before the fall of the empire.
FF7 was redeemed by its storying telling. It also had exceptional FMVs for the time. But FF7 took a long time to move millions of units because there were so many flaws. It only did as well as it did at first because there were no other real options. Later on the 'first time playing an RPG' feeling became popular.
I think theres a bit of a generation gap. Most experienced gamers have played the shit out of FPS on the PC, and the last 4-5 years thats pretty much the only Genre that keeps coming out with games frequently that are for the PC.
I think console gamers and newer less experienced gamers in general have played less games then hardcore gamers period (in the library of games they have previously played). And this is really why you have yuppies thinking Halo 2 is the greatest thing "evar!!" it's not. It simply copies what has existed since the Doom and quake days with slight refinements, it does not play "radically differently" then any other game, you can have just as much fun in Serious Sam or SS 2nd encounter then you can in halo. The AI may be good but even if the AI was dumb as shit Halo would still get glowing reviews and still have millions of drooling idiots claiming its the best thing ever.
The thing halo has is Master Chief and the fact that they nailed the feel of the universe and style of aliens well enough to make the game universe appealling.
If you replaced all the graphics in halo with placeholder art I doubt halo 2 would get such glowing reviews. The halo experience is really about the small things they layer to the game that adds up to an overall experience on top of the graphics. They got things like the cpu controlled team mates right and the fact you feel they aren't just mindless dolls. They keep the pacing of the game going by having the recharging shield so you dont have to run around to find health and theres usually always plenty of ammo because you can pick up alien weapons and use them against your enemy.
It's nothing revolutionary they just limit your guy and force you to make decisions. You can't carry 10 guns at once and pull them out of your ass you can only carry two.
I still think its because most console gamers this generation have never been exposed to a lot of great FPS and thats why you see Halo selling so well.
I'd just like to mention that Microsoft has just consumed the entire lives of approximately 45 people with this statistic.
We are doomed as a species.
No, I think there just haven't been any Big Hyped Games(TM) to get excited about in the past two years. Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and, to an extent, GTA:SA have been eagerly expected for years. Last holiday season we had some good games that came out, but these are not only Big Hyped Games(TM) but Sequels to Big Hyped Games(TM). And, believe it or not, gaming is still such an absolute microcosm, and gamers are generally so young that they're not really interested in politics (see: youth vote 2004), that I don't think that theory really holds water.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The XBox is a great system, but one reason Halo 2 has sold so many copies is because there is not any other good games out for the system. I can say this because I own an XBox along with every other system and I barely have 4 games for it. I've bought several multi platform games in the near past, but they never seem to make an XBox version. Unfortunatly, since I do own all the systems, Halo 2 doesn't have enough appeal for me to purchase it. Games like Ninja Gaiden and HL2 do, though.
I have Halo 2 and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. IMO, Metroid Prime 2 is a far superior game.
It has excellent atmosphere, puzzles, level design, enemy AI, bosses, story, and an improved scanning system (color-coded now).
Don't get me wrong. Halo and Halo 2 are very good. However, Metroid belongs in the "masterpiece" category.
Well, there's me for a start. I was actually more psyched about Star Wars: Battlefront than Halo 2. Why? Because I'd played the original both in single and multiplayer, and been disappointed by the weak single player game that had you exploring the same room over and over again as of the Forerunner Complex levels. But I was actually pleasantly surprised by Halo 2's level design. It's a step up from the original in that the repetitive level design has gone out of the window, and while some areas look vaguely similar, there's none of the potato print levels seen in Halo. Where I did feel Halo 2 let me down was in the bait and switch pulled regards the game's location. The trailers seen so far, and the ads and so forth, all indicated the game would take place on Earth. Yet only the first few levels take place on Earth and then you're off to another world. Multiplayer in Halo 2 is fun if you have Live - but if you can only play on a single box you're not getting the most out of it. AI controlled bots would have been a blast, but for reasons as yet unknown Bungie left those out. So as it stands, Halo 2's a good game, but it's not the mind-blowing experience you'd think from the hype.