Bungie Unveils New Halo 2 Maps

An anonymous reader writes "Bungie has revealed that a total of 9 new maps will be made available both over Xbox Live and as a separate $20 add-on DVD for those without. The first maps will come out on Live in late April with 2 free and 2 for purchase (all maps will be free on Live by the end of the summer) with the remaining 5 debuting on Live when the add-on DVD is released. Also featured in the content update are a wide variety of fixes to eliminate cheating and balance gameplay elements."

Comments

Re:In Other News

[JorDan Clock]

Valve makes money from people just running Steam (Ads, my friend.) however MS and Bungie have a subscription model without any ads. The current price paid to use Xbox Live! covers the day to day costs, but the amount of money required for development and distrobution of additional content has to come from somewhere.

Also, it will be free eventually. They're just trying to recoup some of the losses.

Re:Yayish

[hollismb]

Aim for the head. You take take someone out with a battle rifle in three shots (three bursts of three).

Re:In Other News

[UWC]

I'd consider the Live subscription a sunk cost. You don't consider sunk costs when weighing differences like that. It's like complaining that a particular Linux distro isn't free because the only alternative to paying to order the CD is to pay an ISP subscription fee.

In that vein of thought, I wonder if the DVDs will install the content completely to the hard drive, and, if so, if there's any way to limit the number of times you can install it. Without a Live subscription, you have no reason to connect your XBox to the Internet and therefore no way to validate the install. Unless you have to have the DVD inserted in order to use the content, which seems unlikely unless it includes the Halo 2 engine on it or requires a supremely annoying "insert-disc-for-verification-and-then-put-Halo2-d isc-back-in" deal.