Slashdot Mirror
Halo 3 Almost Done
The word from Bungie is that they consider the final chapter in the Halo story 99.9% complete. They're now in the home stretch, with time to polish. Says Luke Smith, "That last .1% percent is pretty important, however. Right now, some testing is being done in a controlled retail environment via our Halo 3 Epsilon. You've probably seen reports online or even folks on your friends' list playing it, so here's the scoop: The Epsilon is a closed, final phase testing for Halo 3. We won't be making the Epsilon available for public consumption, so while that's immensely disappointing for folks hoping that Friends and Family invites would be extended for the Epsilon, just know that each day you wait in agony is another day closer to September 25." Wired has a huge blowout feature on the title, with lots of screenshots, discussion of how the game was made, and more.
Seriously, why is this news? I mean, they already set the frikkin release date some time ago, of course Halo has to be "almost done" by now!
And considering they will need a bit of time to press the discs and ship them to retailers, it is about time that they are almost done now.
Sheesh, if they would have declared Halo 3 gold master, that would at least have been some sort of news, but "It is almost done" is not the least informative; right now, it is to be expected if they want to honor their release date.
I guess so...here's the Game Announcement:
Bungie announces Halo 3, the third and final game in the Halo Trilogy. Halo 3 will be released for Microsoft's Xbox 360 in 2007.
I think it's open to interpretation, so they could get away with declaring this the final chapter in the arc. I'll chalk it up to clever marketing speak and leave it at that.
Killzone 2 graphics have to be better than Halo 3's, or it will most likely die. After reviewers have been giving KZ2 such stellar reports as 'non-innovative gameplay' or the gem where fighting a mini-boss was 'uninspired', graphics sound like the only thing going for it.
-- toolie
There's no predicting, at a million pre-orders when last reported, the game is already a qualified hit and we're just over a month out. Assuming an average price of $80 USD (regular @ 60, special @ 70 and collectors @ 130) its generated roughly 100 million in sales just on pre-orders thus far. Halo 2 sold something like 1.5 million pre-orders, and I expect halo 3 to top that, ending between 1.5 and 2.5 million pre-orders when it's all said and done. Add in walk-in sales for the first month, and you're looking at something that may be approaching a quarter billion dollars in sales. Add to that the fact that its going to be a system-seller going into a Christmas where the the PS3 lineup is still pretty weak (the 360 library is comparatively strong in the months leading into Christmas) and the Wii which is still largely unavailable due to high demand (not to mention that it doesn't really compete for the 360/halo audience -- then again, it is Nintendo and they do have a strong holiday lineup as well so they'll be able to sell every Wii they can produce.)
Also, the E3 Halo footage was still Beta content, we know that it looks better by now and also that its a smooth 60 fps. I'm not sure whether Killzone was in-game footage or not (I know that there was a hoopla earlier over their use of pre-rendered footage) and we also don't know if it was running at the desirable 60 FPS mark. Thus far, I have yet to see anything on the PS3 which tops the 360 graphically and doubt we ever will (the 360's GPU technology is a generation ahead of the PS3s after all, and was designed for the console, rather than a PC part tacked on late in the design process when they discovered that multiple Cell processors didn't provide the graphics power they desired at a cost they could stomach.)
My one prediction for this holiday season is that the 360 and Wii will widen their respective leads over the PS3
Gameplay is always the last thing to be tacked down on any game, so this isn't indicative of any problems whatsoever. They're not making sweeping changes at this point, its all spit and polish -- fine tuning. Something as small as moving a weapon spawn-point a few meters in-game can really alter the outcome of a multi-player game, or the number, type and placement of grenades can drastically change how you approach a campaign map.
Finalizing gameplay is a bit like making a collage, you lay out all the pieces and see how it looks, you fine tune and look again, repeat until you're satisfied, then glue it all down -- of course, through the magic of software you can continue to fine-tune after its out in the wild as well.
Its standard practice that gameplay isn't in its final form until a week, or even days, before being sent off for manufacture.