Halo 3 In Stores On September 25th

Officially announced on the Bungie website (now with Luke Smith action), Halo 3 will be in stores on September 25th of this year. The multiplayer Beta for the game begins today; if you're looking for some answers they have an extensive online guide available for curious minds. MTV's Stephen Totilo had a chance to have some good chats with the developers, and he points out three things every Beta player should do, as well as a proposal for an unusual alternate scoring system for bad players. GameDaily has just a few more details, including some information on the tie-in Zune device Microsoft is offering to enflame fanboy passions.

Comments

Comments

[Nerdfest]

Wow, still no comments? All interested parties are probably already playing the beta.

Beta Delayed

[EveryNickIsTaken]

People who are currently trying to download through the Crackdown tie-in are experiencing a "short delay," according to a message posted on Bungie's website. It was supposed to go live at 8 AM EST - I'm curious as to how many servers crashed & burned.

Re:Beta Delayed

[hidannik]

I heard they were awaiting delivery of their complement of lemon-soaked paper napkins. Until then, there will be a short delay. Please return to your seats.

zune tie-in

[suv4x4]

I love it when Microsoft pretends to be oblivious to the trends and situation on the market:

"including some information on the tie-in Zune device Microsoft is offering to enflame fanboy passions"

The subtle (or maybe not) stupidity of this struck me first when I saw the following list of options on the MIX 2007 video streams:

Stream live (Silverlight).
Download (WMV).
Download for Zune.

Great, thanks buddies! So although I have the latest ever WMP, the only option I have to stream it live is a crashing beta plugin that has no stable release out there.

But the funnier thing was the "download for Zune". You see, many sites offer "download for iPod" links. This is because a huge number of people have iPods. I guess in Microsoft-land, what matters is artificially push your product in tie-ins and integrating it in your sites, in the hope someone buys a Zune just to watch the MIX 2007 streams on the go.

The only thing they've proven so far, is Zune can't stand on its own.

Re:zune tie-in

[ditoa]

You know you can open the URL for the WMV in WMP and it will stream it just the same. You might have to wait 30 seconds for it to get enough buffered but its better than using Silverlight.

Re:zune tie-in

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"The only thing they've proven so far, is Zune can't stand on its own."

??
How is offering a Zune download link proof that Zune can't stand on its own? iPod must *really* be struggling to stand on its own, given the number of iPod links and accessories out there. :|

As for the Silverlight "stream", what's wrong with Microsoft dogfooding its own stuff? MIX2007 was larely about Silverlight, so they use it. Good for them. What, do you think they should use Flash to show Silverlight vids?

BTW, the Silverlight "streams" at the MIX2007 site are actually just progressive downloads, just like the WMV Download links. The only difference is that Silverlight plays the videos within a web page. The actual .wmv url used is the same for both cases.

Re:zune tie-in

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft also offers iPod downloads on the MIX07 site: http://sessions.visitmix.com/

What's wrong with them supporting their own device too?

Re:zune tie-in

[brkello]

This is Slashdot. They expect Microsoft to support Apple/Nintendo/Linux but not themselves. Because that is evil. Or something.

Re:zune tie-in

[suv4x4]

How is offering a Zune download link proof that Zune can't stand on its own? iPod must *really* be struggling to stand on its own, given the number of iPod links and accessories out there. :|

Maybe you don't understand the subtle difference. There's lots of iPod links out there since there's a lot of demand for them.

While with Zune, Microsoft tries to sprinkle Zune links everywhere on its own sites, in attempt to make it seem as if there's demand. But in fact, the relation is reversed: Microsoft hopes this somehow will help Zune's adoption.

If it's not clear yet, I'll give example. You know how during the first bubble one-man companies tried to replicate the success of big companies by creating shiny sites so presented as if they're some big corporation with top clients, and everyone uses their service? They kinda thought that if they replicate the language and look of the best sites out there, they'll replicate also their success. But alas, people see through those things.

And they see through Microsoft's desparate attempts to market Zune and Vista too. Now, you won't hear me whining about "M$" and the quality of MS software and so on. I'm not a random MS basher. I use and like much of Microsoft's software. Windows, Office, Visual Studio: they're ranging from good to great for their purpose. But Microsoft heroic marketing efforts to boost Microsoft's stillborn products are truly hilarious.

Re:zune tie-in

[bigman2003]

Of course they offer Zune links...they NEED to be the ones to start the ball rolling.

If I had a Zune, I would be pissed if they didn't.

When Apple put up its first iPod links- before iPods were everywhere...was this some sort of cheap push? No, it is just an attempt to build up an infrastructure.

At what point is it okay in your mind for them to put up Zune links? 5 million sold? 10 Million?

Do you believe that any product that does not sell enough units should be completely ignored?

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[EveryNickIsTaken]

You forgot - you have to buy a house to have a socket to plug the system into - so there's an additional $300k right there. Tool.

Yes!....but

[hydraulos]

Do they relase it for the new scool season on purpose?
I can see my 1q Report card allready :P

Re:Yes!....but

[brkello]

I'd be more worried about your inability to spell. That will probably do more damage to your report card than Halo will. But maybe you skipped Spelling/English to play Halo 2.

Re:Yes!....but

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they relase it for the new scool season on purpose?
I can see my 1q Report card allready :P Don't worry about the grades. If the campus network detects Halo traffic coming from your dorm, you're automatically granted a C average. In addition, the administration will immediately swap your major to Communications and electronically submit your application to all the local Fraternities. Depending on what country/state you live in, you may also automatically be diagnosed with glaucoma, and a local pharmacy will deliver weekly doses of medicinal marijuana and RedBull to your room.

tell me on september 24th

[cliffski]

Who gives a fuck? this agme is coming out in 4 MONTHS. whooopy so. how about games 'journalists' actually report on stuff I can actually enjoy, rather than what might be 'just around the corner' 4 months away. I'm sick of people hyping stuff a million years before release. unless you are gullible enough to 'pre-order' a game, who cares about any of them until they are in stores? or maybe a month away if you need to put money aside?

Re:tell me on september 24th

[suv4x4]

I'm sick of people hyping stuff a million years before release. unless you are gullible enough to 'pre-order' a game, who cares about any of them until they are in stores? or maybe a month away if you need to put money aside?

You were modded as flamebait (do people know what this means? how can you possibly start a flamewar from your claims?).

But what you're talking about is an actual problem with tech news sites and news in general. If you look at the news we read here, over 3/4 of it is speculation about upcoming things or just speculation for whatever.

It's nice to know things in advance, but this is approaching the usefulness of white noise when in overdose, and it's harder to see what's going on NOW, buried in the sea of "coming up at some point maybe!" articles.

Re:tell me on september 24th

[C0rinthian]

I know people who want to plan their vacation time around this release date. So for thiem, this advance notice is quite handy.

Re:tell me on september 24th

[cliffski]

Cool, I'm glad it's not just me. One of my fave games news sites often has news items now that run something like this:

"rumour of new announcement of new game by big known company coming tommorow!"

followed by

"its true! new game will be released sometime towards the end of next year, says company X!"

when really the first item isn't news at all. (arguably neither is the second). I have a new game coming out in ten days, and I'm just starting to tell press about it now. Maybe I am old school, but I feel that a lot of game marketing depts are guilty of becomming "the boy who cried wolf". I actually have no idea when S.T.A.L.K.E.R was released, because I was so bludgeoned with constant waffle about it for years leading up to the games release.
By all means get excited the week before Spore and Halo 3 are on shelves, until then, let me know what is on shelves now, and whether I should buy it.

Re:tell me on september 24th

[kid_oliva]

It seems like somebody has some anger management issues. You can enjoy Halo 3 Beta if you have Crackdown. I will be enjoying Halo 3 when I get home from work. Yes I did pre-order the game because the last two were fun and most of my friends will have it as well. Actually by the time the beta is over you will only have to wait 3 months for it to come out.

Re:tell me on september 24th

[EvilIdler]

I've stopped caring about overhyped future releases. I check the "this week" and "next week" lists at
tothegame.com for what's right around the corner. I knew about this Halo 3 beta only because it
was part of the extras in Crackdown (which I bought for the game, not the beta).

BUT I'd really like to try this beta. I've been promised it for a long time (see this sticker on my
Crackdown box? See the 5000 people currently playing the beta? It's obviously opened!), and
spending a few weeks trying out a near-complete version of the game could help making me
purchase it on release day. Provided it's fun and they really listen to ideas, of course :)

>By all means get excited the week before Spore and Halo 3 are on shelves, until then,
>let me know what is on shelves now, and whether I should buy it.
There's feckall on the shelves now. A few cool older games, a few expansions, a few new hack
and slash games, some of which have StarForce. In short, digital distribution, MMOs and
console games are the best options now.

Re:tell me on september 24th

[brkello]

Ok, it seems you don't understand that you and your opinion isn't the opinion of everyone. A lot of people like Halo and are excited about it and love to hear any news about it. A lot of game journalists are also reporting on other games...ones you might even enjoy. So basically...get over yourself.

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[suv4x4]

Halo 3 isn't supposed run on XP, you'll have to upgrade to Vista.....

It's worse. This is Halo 2 you're talking about. It's 2 that requires Vista. 3 isn't even coming on a PC any time soon.
I suppose they'll release Halo 3 in few years, and it'll run only on Vienna (the next major windows release).

It's quite sad really. You can't make someone upgrade to Vista to run a 5 year old game that could run just as well on Windows 98. Just like you can't give Zune prizes and imagine people will not notice it's not an iPod.

Microsoft should maybe start thinking how their product may stand on their own, versus going for a multitude of random cheapshots like this.

HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[pslam]

I silently laugh every time I see someone propose an exact release date - sometimes even as ridiculous as morning or afternoon - which is 4 months in the future. Yes, software is so exact a job that you judge how long it'll take to write to within 0.4%!

To be fair, what's supposed to happen is you add on about 25-50% to your predicted hand-waving estimate, and when the release date gets near and you're running short of time, in order:

• Cut features
• Prioritize bugs - serious or very obvious cosmetic ones first (reviews always pick up on those), minor or cosmetic and hard to spot ones last. QA review board decides whether the remaining cosmetic ones are OK to ship with. Yes, people do ship with known bugs, but if they're rare or just minor glitches then it's better than shipping months later, and they can always be patched in the field. Note - I'm not talking about security products here :)
• Absolutely last thing - ask people to work extra hours for perks such as free food, extra time off or even overtime pay.

What really happens (from long experience) is actually, in order:

• Ask people to work extra hours for no return, which gets you very grumpy employees getting fat on pizza and losing their social life. Usually goes hand-in-hand with a deadline that was unrealistic when it was set 6 months before.
• Add extra features. Yes, when a product launch is looming, for some reason people always think up extra features to stick in rather than cutting them. Something is always a new must-have feature, and there is a disconnect in the brains of the management who ask for them.
• Start reclassifying serious bugs as minor. Reclassify minor bugs as cosmetic. Ignore cosmetic bugs. Cosmetic bugs are now features. There, no more bugs!

It pisses me off to see this happening elsewhere, and even more so when I realise this is just the way things are in the software industry. It's mostly run by people who haven't got a clue how software or QA works at all.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[JFMulder]

I work in a company in which produces special effects software. We've pretty much always agreed on a shipping date months in advance, but R&D chooses what features would go in the product and what would have to be cut early on. We've had 4 releases in the past two years and the most we've slipped is 1 week and the software is getting more and more stable. Nothing important ever gets cut. No rough edges. Good management makes a WORLD of difference. The videogame business should not be taken as an example of the software development industry.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[twistedsymphony]

It's always been my opinion that management can make or break anything, good management can take a mediocre team and a mediocre product and turn out something much better then expected, making the right discissions and pulling the team together to work at levels above what they're used to...

Poor management can take the best ideas and the best team and turn out a complete turd of a product.

The real problems start when a poor manager finds himself with a project that does well despite his best efforts at failure. Then gets pegged as a good manager that can do no wrong.

It's been my experience that while good management is one of the most important factors to delivering quality products on time... it's also one of the rarest things you'll ever come by in the workplace.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[Kelbear]

All the news and retailer sites thus far were pointing to November for Halo 3 (I have no idea who makes these guesses or how...). But seeing as how the 3-week beta was due to hit today, I was a bit suprised to see an official release date of September 25th.

I wonder, can they really fix the issues that will crop up after these 3 weeks for the gold version before September 25th? Or do they not expect anything to come up after the mass testing?

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[KillaBeave]

And it though tit was just my projects that were this dysfunctional ... LOL You hit the nail on the head with that post! It should be etched into the front of every business/it (MIS generally) 100 level textbook.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[Dutch Gun]

I'm not sure if you've ever worked in the console development business, but having been through that process myself (I'm a programmer btw), there's a few things you might not be aware of. First, it's not ridiculous to propose an exact release date, even specifying morning or afternoon. What's happening here is the culmination of a long chain of events, and proper synchronization of all aspects of the release are crucial. The software development, while the most important element of these events, is typically completed many weeks in advance of the actual launch.

Here's a few elements in that process:

Q&A process / final signoff
Gold master creation (at least 6-8 weeks before launch day for our projects if I recall correctly)
TRC certification
ESRB board ratings
Disk duplication
Packaging and Boxing
Warehousing and Distribution
Marketing (print / TV / Movie / Web advertising)
Release day events & promotions
ACTUAL GAME RELEASE

So, there are a lot of non-software-related tasks that must be lined up months in advance. So no, it's not all that crazy to actually schedule the launch date exactly. And (I'm sorry you seem to have had bad experiences here), in companies I've worked for, development actually slowed down prior to gold master, as we tended to get *extremely* conservative about what we would be willing to change for fear of destabilizing the product.

Regarding your "what really happens" list:
* Yes, hours typically increase. But the way this occurs is vastly different from company to company. Some companies that I've worked for have had generous time-off policies post-release to allow employees to unwind after shipping, and my current company doesn't really believing in massive crunches at all, which is pretty refreshing. Still, you'll often find (at most any company) a certain number of employees who stay longer hours because they want to produce the best game they can and are willing to put the time in to make it happen, not because a manager is standing over them with a whip.
* I've not had your experience with feature bloat. If anything, the project leaders at the places I've worked have often been quite ruthless about cutting fluff, much to the dismay of the devs who worked on those features.
* Well, how else do you propose to deal with a bug like "tree in level 8 overlaps slightly with castle wall"? Is this type of bug worth delaying the game over? Triage is an important part of the QA process - yes, it can be abused, but if you're actually reclassifying bugs in order to ship the game, then your company has process problem. Once again, my experience, for the most part, differs than yours.

So, yes, these kinds of things do happen, but they are not industry-standard practices. You've apparently just had some bad luck in choosing companies.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[pslam]

My own experience is not actually the video game industry, it's the MP3 player industry :) Same consumer oriented product design, same numb skull management.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[hidannik]

I too got the cold pricklies when I saw the release date moved up six weeks. Looks to me like some honch in a cushy office decided they needed to beat GTA IV to market; according to GameSpot it's to be released two weeks later.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[pslam]

Q&A process / final signoff
Gold master creation (at least 6-8 weeks before launch day for our projects if I recall correctly)
TRC certification
ESRB board ratings
Disk duplication
Oops! Disk duplication took 1 day extra. DOH! It's September 26th shipping.

Or alternatively, your beta testing and bug fixing just had 1 less day to complete, because you told everyone you're going to ship to customer hands on exactly September 25th morning and your boxing and packaging plant will miss your run if you don't. I bet one major bug just got reclassified minor.

I'm not being pessimistic - this is what the real state of affairs is out there. You have been lucky in your job picks so far.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[Dutch Gun]

Oops! Disk duplication took 1 day extra. DOH! It's September 26th shipping.

Or alternatively, your beta testing and bug fixing just had 1 less day to complete, because you told everyone you're going to ship to customer hands on exactly September 25th morning and your boxing and packaging plant will miss your run if you don't. I bet one major bug just got reclassified minor.

I'm not being pessimistic - this is what the real state of affairs is out there. You have been lucky in your job picks so far. I'm not saying that everything was perfect where I worked (lord knows I wouldn't call some of my job picks 'lucky'), but the road to gold master was a typically a fairly controlled process for the most part (at least it seemed so from my vantage-point), especially between the points when the final release dates were announced (any schedule slips had long since occured) and when customers got the product. Having shipped a number of games, for instance, no one was under any illusions about how long certain processes took.

All I was saying is that this was my experience at several different game companies. I'm not claiming to represent the norm of the industry based on just a few examples, but in all fairness, neither should you. The most we can logically conclude is that there's a pretty big discrepancy in how well companies seems to manage this process.

Re:HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[Anonymous Coward]

Dood you understand timescales and milestones perfectly. You have obvious mastery because you have *never* slipped a timescale. U would make a grate manager. Why not contact Steve Jobs Re: iPhone... methinks you have just the skillz he needs.

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[Cathoderoytube]

Microsoft is one of those companies that thinks in great loping lopes. The thing is when you think in terms of lopes you just can't release one thing. That's what Apple does for christ's sake. It has to be horrendously broad to cover as much ground as possible. Now you're probably thinking 'well Halo's only coming out for Vista! What the hell sort of lope is that?'. You have to bear in mind you can only lope forward. Releasing it for XP would be the opposite of loping which is trudging, and frankly that doesn't sound like very dynamic thinking.

I personally applaud Microsofts vision. It's unfortunate I'm a mac user...

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[Rycross]

If you replace "Crystal Chronicles" in this comic with the word "Halo" then you'll get, basically, your post. I hope you realize how ridiculous you sound.

For sale...

[CdrGlork]

If you believe it will come out on that exact date in tip-top condition, I have this great bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you...

SWEET HALO 3 DEMO VIDEO

[mattnyc99]

Pre-beta, better than beta, multiplayer awesomeness: http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_n ews/4216595.html

Better than Previews with Radios

[lmnfrs]

You're complaining about four months? That's not so bad. Back in the day, like 10 years ago, I was really excited about Halo coming out. Then it didn't come out, then didn't some more, then I forgot about it. Then apparently Microsoft released a console system..? My friend told me it had Halo, and I just responded "Oh, that got released? Wow."

We should be thankful they're only giving us 4 months notice. They could be saying "Wazzaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

Metroid Prime...

[7Prime]

Well folks, I could care less about Halo, but at least now we have an approximate release date for Metroid Prime 3.

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[brkello]

I'm sorry...but what the hell are you talking about? Look up the word lope and tell me how that fits in to whatever you are rambling about.

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[Anonymous Coward]

congratulations, you're an idiot.