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Halo 2 Only on Vista
iLogiK writes "Halo 2 will be available for PC, but only in Windows Vista. From the announcement: 'Halo 2 the game that redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action for millions of gamers worldwide, is set to explode onto PCs exclusively for Windows Vista. Halo 2 for Windows Vista will be developed by a dedicated Microsoft Game Studios team in partnership with Bungie Studios.'" That's one way to force upgrades. I thought just not releasing patches for the microsoft-worm-of-the-week would be enough ;)
Vista to become the most popular download on gaming torrents sites... ;)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Does this mean DirectX 10 will be available exclusively on Vista? Or are they simply introducing an artificial restriction here? If the latter is the case, I imagine someone will work around it fairly quickly.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I guess I'll just stick to Worms then!
Cost to play Halo 2 on a XBox: about $200.00
Cost to play Halo 2 on Windows Vista: A lot more than $200.00
Can't see this being any sort of incentive. Heck, I can't even see a big market for it.
I seriously doubt that one single game is going to convince very many people to go through the expense of switching to another version of Windows, and upgrading their hardware.
This space unintentionally left blank.
"Vista: Halo 2 Edition" == "Warezed copy of Vista"
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I look forward to 2011, when it's released.
Microsoft will learn very quickly that they can't treat PC gamers like console gamers. Its a completely different world. There is no such thing as an exclusive release on the pc side. No other game developer will make a game that only runs on Vista and risk alienating the entire community.
> noone is going to upgrade their OS just to buy a praticular game.
Not true, I had to up to XP to play EQ2
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Anyone gonna release a 'compatibility patch' for H2 after it comes out? :)
Halo for PC came out long after the Xbox version and it still managed to sell very well. I think you're underestimating how many people would like to play Halo 2 on PC. Granted the xbox version of Halo couldn't be played online like the PC version, but I'm sure the Halo 2 PC version will add some new features that will make it better than the xbox version.
Also note that Gamespy stats show that Halo is still being played by lots of people on PCs. Good games sell for a long time.
I miss them horribly! Ever since they moved to Redmond they are just a Halo factory. They made their name with wonderful games like Marathon and Myth, but now I feel they are a shadow of their former selves as far as creative flexibility is concerned. The people who ran Bungie made some nice money, but I feel that the quality of their games has diminished somewhat.
I remember reading that the 360 and Vista share similar software in the graphics system. In other words, MS was going to a "write once, play everywhere (that's from MS)" architecture so developers wouldn't have to do a lot of converting. It sounds like this is fallout from that, not some evil marketing plot to make people buy Vista to play a game.
Yup, I hate Windows with a passion, but the latest games I like to play forced me to both build a new gaming rig from scratch (i'm lazy) and get a new copy of Windows - haven't decided between XP or possibly Vista...
Another cheap trick brought to you by the folks in marketing. Really, they need people to buy Vista, as most productivity software will continue to run just fine on XP (and continue to be released for it as well), they need to start getting some hype going. This is only the early going and while Halo 2 may pale beside many of the FPS games out there, some will want it. On it's own it won't be enough to warrant the Vista buy, keep you eyes peeled for more on the home entertainment front. It is already known cable card will only be supported in Vista (on the ms side of things) for example.
Expect more Vista only over the next year, you ain't seen nothing yet.
And we all know how well anti-trust suits work against companies that have enough money to pay the right people off... I don't think MS will be quaking in their boots anytime soon over antitrust. They've been there before and they know how to game the system. The way to get them to quake in their boots is to make them obsolete. I think free/open source software has done a good deal of work toward that goal. :)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The guy that runs the crackpot science site has proof that Microsoft is secretly working on a Linux port.
:-)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Second I would like to know exactly what Halo brought to the gaming market that "redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action..." Other than awesome marketing.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
My thoughts exactly. Halo 2 was released for xbox in what, november 2004? Assuming Vista isn't released until the end of this year (and that's being generous) Halo 2 will be at LEAST 2 years old, if not older. I've played it on my friend's Xbox, and it's hardly unique. Seems like a weak product to act as a 'flagship.'
I wonder how long it will be before Wine will support emulation of Vista?
Truely, I found that my soundcard driver and various other thing would hard-lock my system in XP... very annoying when you're in the middle of a game. Most of the windows games I run play nicely on Wine/Cedega, some even better (as in the case of my laptop, where the video driver will not update in windows).
If Cedega gains more support for newer games, all the more reason for me to stick with it and/or linux. XP is bad enough, I certainly wouldn't want to upgrade to vista just to play a few newer games.
Secondly, Halo isn't that good a game
What do you mean... didn't you read the article? This is the game that redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action for millions of gamers worldwide! How much better can you get??
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
I've used Windows since Windows 95 and upgraded everytime, and never been very satisfied with it.
95 > 98 > ME > 2k > XP
I *swear* I'm not going to Vista. I *swear* it! I'll keep using XP until it's time to buy a new PC, then I'll buy a Mac.
Stephen
"Whats the point of this?"
The point of everything that Microsoft (and most companies) does is to make money.
"First off, anyone who wanted Halo 2 has it for Xbox."
The long-delayed arrival of the original Halo on the Windows platform was a big deal. It did pretty good business. A similar argument -- "anybody who wants Halo already has it for XBox" -- would not have proved accurate.
"Secondly, Halo isn't that good a game- it got a big name as a great Xbox game because Xbox had jack shit else to play."
Halo was decent, Halo 2 was awful. IMHO, of course. Which is, irrelevant. Both sold, which made Microsoft money.
"Thirdly, noone is going to upgrade their OS just to buy a praticular game."
Already covered by other posters.
"This isn't going to push VIsta sales, its just going to kill sales of Halo 2 PC."
I am quite sure that Microsoft has already done the cost analysis. On the plus side, they have:
On the negative side, they have:
If the conclusion they've made from this analysis seems silly to you, keep in mind that the Halo franchise has already paid for itself severalfold. They don't really need the additional revenue from sales of Halo 2 to XP users. But they do need to build Windows Vista awareness, and this is a tool in their arsenal.
If I were the brand manager for the Halo series, I would call this "taking one for the team." It happens a lot in business.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Not that I really care about Halo... but what a bunch of a-holes.
I always thought anyone who really found the Halo's to be truely revolutionary has never played an FPS on a computer -- there really wasn't anything unique about the game. The rendering engine was at best on par with other games of its time, and the control was less than average (I'm a keyboard and mouse guy). Story isn't terribly important when it comes to player vs player. So if it can only be played on Vista, why does anyone really care? It's an old game that wasn't anything special to begin with.
This has long been the case; ever since DirectX 10 was announced, it was known to be Vista-only. DirectX 10 will not run on XP. You can verify this yourself by running the DirectX 10 preview from Microsoft.
Not only that, Direct3d 10 requires DirectX 10 capable hardware, non of which is currently available.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
I am in the same boat as you. I would love to see MS allow PC gamers to play Halo on the same servers as Xbox players. My money says the PC gamers would pwn people using an Xbox and controller.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The only thing that Halo 2 redefined was hype. If these guys think that Halo 2 - which has been on the Xbox for months now - is going to be a selling point for Vista, they're sorely mistaken.
i really doubt that halo2 will be exploding onto the PC market.
I think we've all learned what to expect from a year-late ports of mediocre games.
and what exactly is it that halo2 will require that xp can't provide? is the engine more demanding than doom3 or source?
thanks for selling out, again, bungie...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Well if you upgraded OSes just to play one game, you are a nerd, and/or pirated the OS. A common mistake a nerd/pirate makes here is thinking the average consumer is anything like one. Nobody in all seriousness is gonna upgrade OSes to play a game.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
That's one of the big reasons that MS isn't supporting the mouse for the 360...PC gamers would dominate the online play while console-only gamers with their gamepads would be wondering how the other guy moves so fast (and probably screaming HAX!). Rather than put up with a nonintuitive, relatively slow interface, I just stick with the PC for my FPS gaming. And RTS. And flight sims.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I suspect that Halo 2 on PC has more to do with DRM than with anything else. It will likely use Vista's DRM techniques, and thus wouldn't run on an earlier version of Windows. I can see this being the proof of concept for using DRM in video game development. They may also be looking at this as a real world test of Vista's DRM.
IANAL... But I play one on
... 2k is still chugging along fine for the rest of us.
Here's the deal:
If you want to watch any commercial video that is "hi-def" in full resolution, you must have an HDCP-compliant monitor. No exceptions.
If you do not have an HDCP-compliant monitor, you are at the mercy of whoever created the video. If they are generous, then they will instruct the codec to downsample the video to at least DVD-quality, if not lower. If they are assholes, they will flat-out prevent the video from playing.
These limitations are absolutely 0% technical.
It seems stupid, but it's all part of plugging every single hole they can find. It works together with the "Trusted Computing" requirements (encrypted and obscured I/O and memory) that are continually on the verge of being brought into force.
The original Mac OS had this (circa System 7, at least). The disc would put a couple KB of config files into your "preferences" folder and that was that. Of course, this was because we had 250 meg hard drives in systems that had CD drives as well...
I was using Cedega. It was still pisspoor.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
For the last 3 years, Microsoft has said that they're extending their XBox Live service to Windows when Vista comes out. (No, I don't know why nobody has reported it either; maybe because it still seems so far off. The usb version of the XBox 360 controller [announced at the same time] has already come out.) Anyway, Halo 2 comes to mind when I think of a game that utilizes XBox Live well. It makes sense that they'd use that title to highlight the new features of Windows Vista.
Notice, btw, how they're reinforcing their overall position by leveraging their two platforms in tandem. When some people say cross-platform they're thinking Windows/Mac/Linux. When other people say cross-platform, they're thinking PC/Console. Microsoft is creating an enticing proposition for the content developers.
Not true, I had to up to XP to play EQ2
:D
According to this page, not unless you were using Windows 95. EQ II supports 98/2000/ME/XP. And if you were running Windows 95 in 2004, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
And I laugh at some of these new games that "require" Windows XP...funny, they run on Windows 2000 fine. I'm playing Battlefield 2 (XP only), and Fable: the Lost Chapters (XP only) with no more issues than any of the XP users are experiencing.
Me, I just swore to avoid Windows XP because it doesn't offer much over Windows 2000, and so far I've had no issues with that. Now, Vista I will probably buy, but not because it supports Halo 2 (couldn't care less). I'll buy it because its an excellent upgrade for Windows 2000. When you skip an entire release, Microsoft's OS products are a lot more enticing
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
"Vista: Halo 2 Edition" == "Warezed copy of Vista"
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone made a DVD ISO of a nice, bootable Windows Vista install, stripped out to the bare essentials like those various tech/maintenance CDs, complete with a functioning copy of the game ready to run. If they did it right then it'd not need to do much more than use the HD for swap and for save games.
Has Microsoft managed to finally get all of of the Windows 2000 holdouts to switch to XP yet? I know that they're business customers mainly, but if they're having trouble with them then I don't see them having a lot more success with Vista in the business environment either. 3/4 of the computers at my employer still run Windows 98 or 95...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Halo was innovative because it pushed games into whole new areas of integration.
Besides tribes and a few other games vehicles were mostly viewed as single player feature, not a multiplayer asset. Look at just about any game now and the vehicle + dm model has really taken hold. I would say at least in a small part because of the success of Halo.
Single button grenade throw. The concept of being able to throw grenades whith a gun out was done before (Team Fortress) but nowhere to the level and integration that Halo sported. Throwing a grenade was part of combat in Halo, not just a weapon whose bullets happen to have a short range and bounce.
Single button melee attack. Halo brought the melee attack previously only found in sneaky shadow games like Metal gear to the FPS.
What made Halo the first-person that redefined first person combat were all of these things in tandem:
You're driving along in a jeep, someone throws a grenade onto your jeep. You jump out. Take a shot, they hide behind a rock. You throw a grenade over the rock to flush them out. As they come out you club them over the head.
This is an experience still unique to the halo franchise.
I'd expect the average consumer would buy a new computer with the needed OS preinstalled rather than upgrade an OS. Hardware requirements notwithstanding. I have coworkers who have thrown away fairly modern computers and bought new ones because they thought they needed more of some minor thing like drive space or memory. Doesn't even occur to them that they might be able to swap out parts. The computer is still a closed-box appliance to most people, and they wouldn't think of upgrading or modifying it any more than they'd think about putting a more powerful magnetron in their microwave or a hotter element in their oven.
I would like to know exactly what Halo brought to the gaming market that "redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action..."
Limited turn speeds, large rings which don't affect gameplay, and duh.. Master Chief.
But really, for the first 30 minutes of the game, I thought those little aliens were on my side. I mean, they looked cute and harmless, they made cute little noises, and since they weren't shooting me, I thought they were providing cover fire for.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Duke Nukem Forever is being designed so it will only run on Windows Vienna.
Second I would like to know exactly what Halo brought to the gaming market that "redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action..." Other than awesome marketing.
Had this conversation with a couple friends of mine and I think we finally hit on something. We're all approaching 30. We cut our teeth on Wolfenstein 3D, and stepped up to Doom and all that. How many nights were we up all night deathmatching? Too many to count. Doom was the greatest game of all time for us. We couldn't stop thinking about what we could do in that game and what would be possible if this or that would change and what maps were being made and wouldn't it be cool if there were a mod that did "x".
And that is our frame of reference. Quake brought us into three dimensions and from there on out it's been incremental improvements. To us, Halo is just more of the same.
But then you get a new generation of kids. The same basic stuff appeals to them now that appealed to us back then. Now they have an xbox and live (which makes the whole deathmatch thing much easier than anything on the ps2 or the gcn) and they absolutely love running around shooting their friends and getting shot by their friends and swearing like sailors and ta-da... you've got the new thing.
If you could strap them into a chair and force them to play through the same evolution of experience my age group has had, they'd see it's nothing new. But that's not going to happen and to them Halo is the most amazing game experience ever.
And then you've got people that are my age that just didn't give two shits about computers when my friends and I were playing Doom. Now they have an xbox and it's an entirely new experience for them as well.
Is it an experience I'm interested in? Hell, no. The level design is generally lacking and I don't find the balance of weapons and such to be all that attractive. But I don't stand there and complain and wonder why this game is so popular. It's the first time that lots of the current gaming audience has encountered such a thing. Of course they're impressed.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
without HALO, would we have RedVsBlue?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Halo 2 coming to PC does not even remotely compare to the significance that Doom 3 and HL2 had on the PC gaming community.
Halo 2 is already old. By the time it is actually released on PC (relatively) few people will care.
your EQ2's bitch. :)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Halo 1 Easter Eggs Scroll down abit.
And you will jump right into the DRM box of your dreams. Enjoy.
Why is everyone so up-in-arms about the DRM in Vista? I havn't been impressed with the DRM-protected offerings in 2000/XP, so it's not like I'll be missing out on much.
I don't plan on watching HD-DVDs on my PC, or for-pay HD movies, so the requirement of HDMI for full-resolution doesn't affect me. I've seen what HD looks like on my 19" monitor, and it is not that impressive. I did play DVDs on my computer back in the 90s, but this was back when standalone players cost much more than DVD-ROM drives. I have no desire to reprchase my entire DVD collection just to get a marginal quality improvement.
Please keep in mind, NON-DRM VIDEO WILL NOT BE AFFECTED BY THIS REQUIREMENT. I can still look forward to downloading all the free xvid HD rips I want, and play them back on VLC at full resolution...should I be so inclined.
I don't plan on watching HDTV on this box. I don't plan on listening to DRM-encumbered formats like DVD Audio or SACD on this PC. I don't plan on doing anything remotely attached to DRM.
So, pray tell, could you point out where the DRM in Windows Vista actually affects me?
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
That whole segment will upgrade in one fell swoop regardless, just because that's what they do. They don't require a dangling carrot, just a path to move forward onto.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
Wanna bet?
Halo was a decent enough FPS, but nothing spectacular. It looks like Halo 2 is the same. I'd consider buying it if it were available for my system, but I'm not going to spend my time and money upgrading my hardware and risking a whole new OS just to play one game.
If Microsoft restrict their games pointlessly to running on Vista, that just means their competitors in the gaming markets have a free run over everyone still using XP or earlier. I'll bet there are a lot more people like me than there are mad keen types who will buy the latest and greatest graphics card and upgrading their whole system just for one title that's worth a few hours of gameplay.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's not the speed but rather the accuracy of a mouse that makes it superior. You can set the sensitivity setting in Halo 2 to 10 and turn just as fast as on any PC game but the clumsiness of the controller joystick makes it impossible to aim. With a mouse, on the other hand, you can play at the highest sensitivities and still be able to shoot.
Nail, meet hammer. That's right, right on the head. There you go.
... simply avoid eye contact and back away slowly. I often find circle strafing works well also, it's not like they are ever going to effectively track you with a console controller if you do that)
I'm in exactly the same situation to you, although in my case I must admit to being naive to the facts at first. I heard all about how Halo was up there with sliced bread, and remember it being one of the first games I picked up for my xbox. From start to finish I was wondering what the hell I was missing. I actually kept playing just in case I was going to suddenly be awed by whatever people went on about. The few small sections with the flying vehicles were fun, all else felt like work. I actually put the game down for a couple of months because I simply couldn't stand it. It has the honor of being the very reason I nowadays simply refuse to bother playing boring games to the end, when normally I would purely because I'm already half way thru, even realising I'm really not having any fun.
The level design was, lets face it, abysmal (I'm still in awe of hearing that people have actually claimed to love the Library) and it was simply the base of the rest of what is a very mediocre game. Many a 'discussion' was had with people that all this had been done before, and much better, and that this was a very average game that they appeared to be viewing thru rose tinted glasses.
Then the exact same thing that you have said occured to me. All the people that love this game and proclaim it as the best game ever, do so because it's the first real FPS they've experienced, and the first time they seen the simple beauty of blowing your friends away in deathmatch. It's the equivalent to our generations Doom (even if level design wise Halo has more akin with Wolf3D), and it's loved just as much. And exactly as you've said, when we first experienced Doom it was the best game ever, because that simply hadn't been done before.
Now there is the problem of a large majority of PC gamers that see Halo for the standard, nothing special FPS that it is, while all the people for whom Halo is their first experience, can't understand why all us GHEY FAGGOTZZZ!!!111 don't worship at the Halo altar. It would be great if maybe they could appreciate the experience that we've had to regard Halo as nothing special, but maybe because of the apparent age bracket of a lot of Halo fans, that may not happen. Who knows.
(Sure, I lost any chance of karma with that last paragraph, but sometimes you just get sick and tired of hearing the same old HALO ROOLZ bullshit over and fucking over again. And the people that HAVE played PC FPS and STILL regard Halo as the best thing ever
No, they are not.
What happens right now is that if you dont have a hardware accelerated driver for OpenGL installed, windows will use a 100% software OpenGL implementation (which implements pretty much no extentions or recent GL features).
On Vista, the software implementation will be replaced with an implementation that implements more of the core GL features and extentions but does it on top of Direct3D.
In both cases, if you install the drivers from NVIDIA or ATI or whoever, you will still get full hardware accelerated OpenGL with all the extentions your vendor has chosen to provide. But, on Vista, using that will disable some of the 3D Accelerated Aeroglass UI crap.
Even more to the point, the display vendors say it should be possible to build a driver that can handle both the Aeroglass UI AND OpenGL at the same time.
Me, I just swore to avoid Windows XP because it doesn't offer much over Windows 2000, and so far I've had no issues with that. Now, Vista I will probably buy, but not because it supports Halo 2 (couldn't care less). I'll buy it because its an excellent upgrade for Windows 2000. When you skip an entire release, Microsoft's OS products are a lot more enticing :D
K ernel/default.aspx
r nel.mspx
Actually this is a sad myth in the Windows world, a lot did change with WindowsXP, stuff that would be important to almost everyuser, and from your level of knowledge especially you.
Things from several fairly big performance, but also stability changes are in WindowsXP, and were worth the upgrade, sorry that you didn't ever move over. However at this point, I agree you should just wait for Vista if XP would cost you to upgrade in the meantime.
However for people that think XP is only Win2K with crayon buttons, do a bit of reading, there are things that would surprised a lot of people.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/XP
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/kernel/xp_ke
Win2k was a massive milestone in the Windows world, so XP got overlooked, and this is where you will note a lot of things that the 'average' journalist just don't get or didn't understand well enough to report on. Also remember than WindowsXP is basically the newer Windows 2003 Server code base, (as long as you have SP2 installed).
PS To add to the above thread about Halo2 being used to FORCE users to upgrade to Vista, that is about insane. If that was MS's intent then the WPF and all the other Vista technologies they are making available for XP would not be available for XP users. Why would Microsoft bother?
Secondly, Bungie is the developer of Halo2, they actually make the decisions on the platform and graphics requirements, Microsoft doesn't micro manage their work.
So all the people with the conspiracies need to get a life.
Take Care,
TheNetAvenger
Do I really have to drag that Niemöller quote out again? Just because you personally aren't hurt by this particualar iteration of DRM doesn't mean it isn't still evil and should be boycotted!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I AM boycotting it.
Did you read a word I said? I'm BOYCOTTING DRM, not the OS it is attached to.
You don't magically feed the DRM machine by buying the OS. You feed the DRM machine by purchasing DRM-infested videos and music and playing them on the OS in question. Since I don't plan on feeding the DRM machine, I feel good about the upgrade.
Look at it this way: if nobody BUYS HD-DVD movies, and therefore nobody PLAYS HD-DVD movies on Vista, then nobody will experience the DRM.
Be reasonable: you can have the OS without partaking in the DRM. And be realistic: it's not like yours or my stance is going to help anyway, the sheeple are still going to eat DRM up...Apple anti-DRM folks already know this first-hand.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
No, you're not, because "not planning to do anything [with it]" is not the same as actively avoiding it and working against it. Your "mini-boycott" won't make any difference, because Microsoft can still point to a chart and say "X million people bought our DRM-infested OS, so obviously they don't have a problem with DRM! Go ahead, US Government, make it mandatory to connect to the Internet (or some other thing that you will do)!"
It doesn't matter if you aren't planning to use it, because you're still part of the number that Microsoft will point to to justify it's existence.
Besides, even if you disregard all that, Microsoft is still pushing DRM and you're still supporting them by buying their products. If you really care as much about stopping DRM as you say you do, you'll boycott all products from every company that pushes DRM, or at least try as hard as you can to do so.*
*I can see maybe having an Apple product because of the strategic value of keeping the market fragmented between "Fair"Play and PlaysFor"Sure," or getting Windows because you're absolutely required to use it for your job, or something.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz