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5/2/2017 4:48:58 PM
39
Halo was only popular back in the day because it had no competition.
This was an interesting argument I heard a couple of days ago. I was watching a YouTube video where a guy was arguing against this claim.
He took the time frame from 2006-2009, he looked at the most popular Xbox games at that time. I think it was something like 28 total titles, 22 of which still exist today. So the guy was talking about how the games that halo competes with today, had a franchise version of itself back in halos peak popularity time frame that it still competed with. Back then halo was the number one Xbox game, now it hovers around the 22nd most popular game. He was clearly making an argument that halo had plenty of competition back then, as 22 of the 28 franchises back then are still competing with halo today. He goes on to state that clearly the fault for halos downfall rest on 343's shoulders.
At halos peak popularity, halo 3 had over 1 million players, I tried looking up the numbers, but couldn't find anything official, but it seems like during a new release a halo game gets about 400,000 players, and a year after release those numbers drop to roughly 60,000. (Take that with a grain of salt it's not an official count, just what I could find from threads on Reddit and waypoint)
However, he has left out some important info. From the time period of 2001-2006 halo really didn't have any competition at all. It quickly became the most popular game of its time for good reason. It was the only game of its kind to have so much social aspects. By the time halo 3 was ready to release, halo was a juggernaught that had no competition.
I believe the first game to show any sign of competing against halo was cod. However, it wasn't until 2009 when modern warfare 2 released and halo finally got dethroned as most popular Xbox game.
Today halo competes with so many first person shooters that have social aspects of them.
Cod
Destiny
Titanfall
Gears of war
Battlefield
This is just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more. Had these games existed at the level they are now, I think halo could have still been top dog, but not for as long as it was.
I think the lack of competition argument is a very good one. Because yeah, halo was competing against some of the same franchises that it still competes against today, but hardly any of them (if any at all) existed as it is today. All the cods were still your carbon copy ww2 role play game (ironic that's what they're going back to now) just like Medal of Honor and all of those types of games, none of them existed as they are today.
However, 343 has DEFINITELY played a HUGE role in the downfall of halo. Granted the first sign of trouble didn't come from them, it came from bungie. Reach was already showing signs of people not being interested in halo anymore. (I personally loved reach) however, the game changed up the player movement, something a lot of fans didn't like.
343 had a golden opportunity to change and please the fans with their first halo release, but somehow they changed halo for the worse. They ignored fans and created cod: halo edition. Ever since then, it's been a very troubling relationship. The MCC was a horrendous launch, halo 5 wasn't much better.
Granted halo 5 as it currently stand, is great. I think if it released how it is now, instead of only having 5 game modes, halo 5 could have been a great game that many are still playing today. Instead it's sitting at the 22nd best Xbox game.
Hopefully halo 6 can be better. Hopefully we finally get an actual competitive halo game. (Halo 5 comes close, but it still feels off) and hopefully halo 6 actually has a good launch.
I'm optimistic for h6, being a lifelong halo fan, I'm starting to show massive signs of disinterest. I haven't played a halo game in about 7 months or so. Mostly because while I used to be able to play it, it just wasn't as fun as other games. Now that I want to play it, I can't as it's sitting at 99 gb on my hard drive and needs another update. I no longer have room on my hard drive, and I don't want to delete any room for an update. So I'll have to wait until I get a new hard drive. (I hope this gets fixed in halo 6 as well)
Thoughts?
English
#Gaming
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No, 343 hasn't played a role in Halo's downfall. Time and reality have. A lot more systems are being circulated, more games generated, consumer interest changing on the fly. Halo was innovative as all hell but it only stood out because there really wasn't much to stand out [i]with[/i] it. There weren't other huge system based titles out that fans could get together and relate with as a huge group. Now we have more titles than ever and there are indeed gamers who never liked Halo to begin with. I never thought it was as hot as it was said to be honestly.
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Have you ever noticed outside looks a lot like witcher 3?
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I used to be a massive Halo junkie, playing nothing but Halo 3 or Reach constantly. Then Halo 4 came out. I bought it. Played it. Even tried playing it with my long-time friend who I met through Reach. Neither of us enjoyed it, so we eventually shelved it. And then Halol 5: Cortanas-back-and-evil-lul happened. No. The multiplayer is not enough to redeem this trainwreck, even if I thought it was better than average at best for a Halo game.
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3 RepliesHalo is shit
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4 RepliesUh, CoD 2?
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Because Halo was the best shooter out there and nothing came close on console until the late 2000s? The gameplay, story, and online modes were unmatched by any game. Source: myself, I'm old now.
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4 RepliesDestiny killed Halo.
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Edited by High Charity: 5/5/2017 7:27:00 AMThis just in, OP thinks World at War, GTA IV, CoD 4, MW2, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead (and 2), Dead Space, Bioshock (and 2), Far Cry 2, Fable 2, Battlefield Bad Company (and 2), Saints Row 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Assassin's Creed (and 2), Borderlands, Mass Effect (and 2), Portal, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Red Dead Redemption and Team Fortress 2 in addition to the absolute metric -blam!-load of DLC for those games and others never happened. And that's just some of 2007-2010 (before september). And also not counting annual sport game releases like FIFA, Madden, and NHL. But yeah totally no competition. Want to know what really did the series in? Halo Reach and it's deciding to breach cannon and retcon for the sake of it because the writers were too lazy to make a coherent story. Also Halo Reach deciding to mess with the Golden Triangle of Halo for reasons (see, armor abilities). While it may have sold more initially, it's sales and population died rapidly because of scathing reports on how the game actually functioned.
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Lol that b8
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Halo was a great game.....until Reach. I thought that the basics went out the window and I stopped playing it.
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2 RepliesGears is third person lol
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I don't feel it's was a lack of competition, I remember SOCOM was a thing, as was Medal of Honor, Perfect Dark, and I believe Call of Duty was there too (2003); it just wasn't wildly popular. Bungie had a game with an amazing feel to it, and that put it head and shoulders above the competition. But the competition is definitely stronger today than it was then: Overwatch, Destiny, Call of Duty, Titanfall...Halo is now one in a crowd of excellent multiplayer games (that it paved the way for in my opinion).
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That's the only reason destiny is so popular to if they had competition I think we'd have more content, servers in pvp and a community manager that actually spoke to us.
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Edited by Art of Illusion: 5/4/2017 12:23:35 AMI think there also could have been a great shift in interest over the years. Look at earlier Halos - they've got a pretty good balance between a good story and a fun multiplayer. Even now I think CE multiplayer is super fun to play with friends, same for 2 and 3. But there's two key differences between early Halos and modern shooters - quality of story, and the speed of PvP. Back in Halo's prime, PvP was [i]fun[/i] but pretty slow-paced compared to what we see today. Walking was slow, it took longer to kill players than it usually does now, and weapons were heavier/clunkier. Nowadays we're running up walls, shooting with a gun in each hand, firing lasers everywhere and dodging around enemies like ninjas at the expense of lower health, putting more of an emphasis on pinpoint accuracy rather than slowly approaching each other and waiting for one of you to die from all the bullets. My point is that, the way I see it, older games had awesome stories and fun albeit slower multiplayer (not true for all older games, but many of the big titles) while newer shooters focus [i]less[/i] on story and more on fast-paced action. Halo 5 is stuck somewhere in between; it's story isn't that great IMO, and the multiplayer tried too hard to adapt and lost the classic Halo feel. Not to mention that if you [i]do[/i] start to want a story-driven game, you've got plenty that have only focused on story (TLOU, HZD, etc.) and also have amazing plots. At this point, Halo either needs to go back to its roots as story-driven with its classic, simple MP, or just go full fast-paced-shooter. I doubt they can excel if they try to find a middle ground.
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I think it's a little more complex then there just wasn't any competition. The Halo franchise was the pioneer for this type of online game, the competition back then wasn't around cause no one else had the Halo formula that was doing so good. Halo single-handily made the Xbox what it is today. It could really be compared to Mario with NES. To say it only succeeded cause of lack of competition is like comparing modern day athletes to legends. It just doesn't work. It was a remarkable game for it's time that had no rivals, cause it was that good. People's taste in games has also changed with time, the COD formula ruled the later 2000's and seems to be dying out to more open-world MMO'ish type of games.
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1 ReplyI'd have to disagree. While bungie did revolutionize the online mp world with halo, I'd say people bought the first one for the fps gameplay, but kept buying the games for the story. However, 343 has done a horrible job at marketing and story in general. Reach to halo 3 gave us a continuous story, while 4 and 5 have time jumps with the gaps filled in by the books, which a lot of people don't read. Combine that with the horrible and somewhat misleading marketing they did for halo 5, and you've got a recipe for failure.
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3 RepliesEdited by Hippo_Legacy: 5/3/2017 2:38:26 PMI strongly disagree. That's like saying Final Fantasy is only popular because there weren't that many JRPGs coming to the west at the time. It's not true and it's not why the franchise is so beloved. Here are some of the shooter games that existed along side Halo and Halo 2 on Xbox: Republic Commando DOOM 3 Half-life 2 Unreal Championship Battlefront 2 Timesplitters 2 Counter Stike Unreal Championship 2 Battlefront CoD 2 CoD 3 Medal of Honor: Frontline Medal of Honor: Rising Sun Now not every one of these games has online or LAN capabilities, but, clearly there were a few good shooters available other than Halo and Halo 2. Halo did everything better than these games and it was just flat out fun, that's why it became beloved, not because it had no competition.
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5 Repliesevery idiot who thinks halo copied cod gets muted
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3 RepliesThe second half is really where I'm at. I actually liked Reach and didn't think it was that bad, but Halo 4 was such a complete waste to me I decided then that the only Halo I'd buy after that would be Halo Wars 2.
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12 RepliesEdited by xI Scion Ix: 5/2/2017 5:39:05 PMHonestly, very accurate for me. The ONLY reason I played Halo as much as I did back then was because it was pretty much the only online console FPS. The moment any of the other faster FPS released I was gone.
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It was populair because it was a good game, nothing that hard to grasp. And it stayed consistently good until Halo 4, so yes good game franchises deserve to be populair.
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4 RepliesHalo 1-3: -set the bar for controls for a console fps tremendously high (comparable to how mario 64 set the bar for 3d jump and run) -fun campaign that allowed split screen -multiplayer was a solid arena shooter without stupid extraordinary skills and loadouts. -weaponbalancing of the powerweapons / spawns was great -most maps had good design and balancing
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I wouldn't necessarily agree at least for me. I still love the hell out of Halo 2, probably my favorite Halo.
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Yeah I remember when halo was around there wasn't much else out for Xbox live. I didn't even have love for the first gen. When COD and GOW came out that's when there was competition. And there has just been more ever since. That's why I think games won't ever get as popular as they once were also.( increased competition)
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11 RepliesPretty much accurate. Another big thing people seem to forget... The player audience is way passed the age of gaming. Most halo players from the OG days are in their late 20s to early 40s. That's when you stop gaming and begin to do life shit. The younger audience didn't grow up with Halo
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I would say that even back then halo still had a good amount of competition. There were still games like call of duty out around that time, you also had a few 007 games, quake, doom, etc. Halo also originally had to compete with the fact that much of its competition had a much larger multiplayer (halo didnt get online until halo 2). So i would say that the argument that halo thrived due to lack of competition is a little faulty. Halo not only catch the players of these games attention, but it also had to convince them that it was worth getting an entirely new system for. Also to make the whole statement about "what if games today existed back then" is a little foolish, since many of those games built upon games like halo. It took call of duty a while to gain as much of a following as halo, and it seemed to take a fair amount of lessons from halo. Destiny is obviously a byproduct of halo, and really at the time halo had a very original story and setup for gaming. Its weapons were unique, it was one of a few games to actually let you use vehicles freely both in campaign and multiplayer. Halo had an AI companion, who even went so far as to question what it is to be human (even back in halo one she was asking these questions), halo even went on to ask questions like are all these aliens actually evil? In a time where first person shooters didnt have much of a campaign beyond kill that thing and stop the spawn of hell (doom), it was a breath of fresh air for the genre.
