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Halo 3 and the Second Wave of 360 Games
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interview with Microsoft Game Studios' Shane Kim in which he discusses the second wave of Xbox 360 games. When asked if Halo 3 is coming out this year, the answer was: 'It depends. If it's the game that everyone is expecting then, yes. For us it's about making a proper impact on the platform. It has to be something with huge significance, so we won't be rushed.'" If you know what that means, I would like to offer you a cookie, because I sure as heck don't.
... but will it actually be developed by Bungie?
Halo 2 is one of the best selling console games ever, and MS would be insane not to have Halo 3 in development for the Xbox 360. That said, the big question is which team is handling it? After Halo 2, Bungie said that Halo 3 would not be their next title. Gates then came out and said something about Halo 3 releasing with the PS3 (in a more recent interview with him he said he'd made a mistake with that). As a result of that combined with the recent release of the 360, everyone has assumed that Bungie must be working on Halo 3 after all despite the fact that nothing has actually been announced.
Personally, I'm a long-standing Bungie fan, since I got Operation Desert Storm for my old Mac LC575. For me, Halo 2 was a gigantic disappointment. It is certainly a good game, but it feels almost soulless, lacking in those special, hard to describe qualities that had set their games apart previously. When you look at the dev team that worked on it, the reason is pretty clear: the original team is now far outnumbered by newer talent.
I would not be surprised at all if Bungie dropped an 'unexpected' bombshell at E3, announcing and demoing a new game that isn't Halo 3, but something completely new. Perhaps an entirely new genre? I'd love to see a talented group like them tackle an RPG, for example. There is absolutely no reason why a separate Microsoft studio couldn't be working on Halo 3 and having some of the Bungie team give them the nod every now and then. It's not unheard of in the game development world after all. For example, Bioware handed off Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights to Obsidian so they could concentrate on developing new IP. There's no reason why Bungie couldn't still be involved in a creative capacity as well.
Allowing Bungie to work on something new while continuing to develop Halo as a brand would make sense in terms of long-term marketing too. MS at the moment have only got a few franchises that they can build on - Perfect Dark, Project Gotham, and Halo are about the shape of it. Bungie have proven that they have the ability to create franchises. If they produce something completely new, then there is a strong chance that it will end up becoming another large franchise for MS. The X360 should have at least another 3-4 years in its lifespan, and having an extra big franchise that they can push down the line when interest begins to wane would be good business sense for Microsoft.
Personally, I'd be far more interested in seeing something original from Bungie. What did that "Pheonix" project they were throwing around a few years back turn out to be, anyway?
This is another reason why I think Sony is trying a different (and more intelligent, IMO) strategy by witholding the release date of the PS3 until shortly before its launch. Currently, Microsoft's waiting around for Sony to pin up a release date, so they can prepare the launch of a huge "must-have" around the same time and undermine the system launch. If Sony just keeps quiet, and then suddenly announces that the PS3 will be launched "next week" (a scenario that I think is quite possible), Microsoft will be caught with their pants down. Everyone's expecting Sony to use the same tactics that they have in the past, but if you look at the current situation, it's much different from any of their previous releases. Both the PS1 and PS2 were the first big systems of their generation (except for the Dreamcast, I know, but Sega was already floundering as a hardware company before then, and were of little concern to Sony). Sony was the guy who could step up and offer something far beyond what was currently on the table, and therefor, they boasted about it for months, even years, before their releases. This is a good strategy when you're the first out of the gate, but its not a very good strategy when you're second, because the other guy has a long time to devise a strategy to undermine your launch. Not only that, but you can't hold people's attention for long periods of time by offering them something far beyond what's currently on the market. This is where the N64 failed. Nintendo talked up the new system for over a year before it's release, while in the meantime, Sony and their cronies put forth some of the greatest gaming opportunities in the history of the industry. When the N64 finally launched, the Playstation's developers had had time to get their skills up to almost on par with the new system, so Nintendo had very little to offer in the way of power.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Sounds a lot like Windows back in 1983
Announced to kill the competition
Released as a product three years later with what is obviously not 3 years of work
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0
Yeah, it's more than it looks like at first glance, but still, THREE YEARS? (From the announcement in 1983, not the start of development in 1981.
How to enable garbage collection on a system without protected memory: #define malloc() ((void *) rand())
I think the problem may be that your a Nintendo fan.
This is so funny. I thought I would be accused of being a Nintendo fan and here you are! The problem with that theory is that I've never even played a GameCube. I really enjoyed my DreamCast and I've spent a fair amount of time playing the PS2, but I never played an FPS on either so I couldn't really make comparisons. I don't like revisionist history, and Halo fans posting on