Halo 2 Expansion?

Gamespot has coverage of the appearance on an official Korean Xbox site of a "Halo 2 X-Pack". The possible expansion is another possible way for Bungie and Microsoft to get the heavily foreshadowed ending to fans of the series. From the article: "Such a Halo 2 expansion could be a twofold boon for Microsoft, adding another incentive for gamers to join its online service and squeezing further dollars from the nearly 7 million gamers who already have Halo 2."

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You could believe the blurb, or you could go to Bungie.net and read the latest "What's Update," which deals with this rumor. While not expressly saying so, Frankie (Bungie representative) implies that the rumored disc is the way Bungie/MS will be distributing the next set of downloadable content (bug fixes, cheat fixes, and some new multiplayer levels have all been (expressly) confirmed).

~UP

One born every minute.

[TotalFusionOne]

Anyone who reads the "Weekly update" section of Bungie's website knows what's going on here. The game multiplayer aspect of the game has a few bugs in it, and Bungie has been working for months on ways to fix those bugs without totally ruining gameplay. Why not quietly update their buggy product, give you a few new maps and multiplayer modes, and make YOU carry the costs?
Of course this is going to start a whole bunch of people discussing whether Bungie (or MS) should release products that aren't finished, or are "Buggy." And to those folks I say: Sod off. If we were to wait for every game to be absolutely perfect before shipping, we'd still be stuck waiting for our PS2 Viewtiful Joe demo discs!

Re:One born every minute.

[cgenman]

Plese tell me you're joking.

Many games have been pushed out the door unfinished. The Legacy of Kain is a famous example, as somewhere in the middle of development they realized they weren't going to make it and cut out huge chunks of game, including the ending, several levels, powerups, etc. In that case it was painfully obvious that they didn't finish in time, as their game constantly referred to a different number of things to do than you actually had, there were quite a few bugs, empty areas, etc. This was made all the worse by the fact that the game was really really good, and if they had convinced their publisher to give them 6 more months for content generation they could have had a staggeringly, legendarily good game.

Xenogears suffered a similar fate. At the time I was playing it, I felt that it was the best RPG ever made. I still feel that way, almost. It's half of the best RPG ever made. They go into excrutiating detail early on, creating a vast and rich world to really lose yourself in. The gameplay is great, they address all of the issues people talk about hating in standard RPG's... It's truly great. Then, about 50 hours in, they switch to "diarama - o - vision." A static picture appears on the screen, and text scrolls by. For about 10 hours. Occasionally this is broken up by largely unfinished gameplay sequences. I swear, this is the only game I've played on a console that had multiple save points within a single flow of text. It went from the greatest RPG ever made to the worst in the span of one cinematic. Eventually it regains its footing and actually finishes like it started, and the ending is great and satisfying despite some laughably bad voice acting. But by that point the experience is totally ruined.

As a less extreme example, the new KOTOR had an ending that just fell completely flat. It wasn't a content pull like in Legacy of Kane, it wasn't a stick-to-the-eye like Xenogears. It was just a rush job, with a much better and more satisfying ending being yanked for time, replaced by something half-arsed and roundly disappointing.

Unfinished games suck. They suck the enjoyment out of a title and they suck out the potential. In the example of Xenogears, it was pretty clear they just had bitten off something that was far, far too big for any reasonable budget of the time. Any publisher would have done the same, though any publisher should have pushed them to work on the important points of the plot first and shaped the degree of detail in the world that could be achieved realistically.

But Halo 2? We're talking about a guarenteed million seller here. Any publisher would have ponied up the extra 6 months for that, as a good reception for Halo 2 would guarentee another insane sales bonanza for Halo 3. The bloody thing made 200 million in presales. But Microsoft isn't any publisher: Microsoft is a publisher with a system to sell. If Microsoft is really dumping the Xbox for the Ybox this upcoming Christmas, they have a major problem on their hands if their in-house publisher releases a system-selling game for the wrong system. Hence, buggy, unbalanced, or even unfinished, they had to get it out the door. Which is a crying shame really, and will really hurt their Halo 3 sales. The moment they realized that Halo 2 was going to ship either late or unfinished, they should have switched the bungee people over to XBox 2 development right away, and had them work on porting what they had done and finishing what they hadn't done. It would have sold a lot more systems than Halo 3 is now capable of.

Don't be so impatient. No publisher or game development company wants to wait until absolutely every little detail is perfect before putting something in a box, but it should least bloody well be finished. Given the choice between a bad experience now and a perfect experience in 6 months, go with the perfect experience. With so many great games out anything less isn't worth your time.