James Pungello of VGU shares his thoughts on what Microsoft needs to do with the Xbox One at E3 to try and catch up to Sony.
Glenn Israel writes: "As of today and after seventeen long years, I am officially no longer contributing to the Halo universe. There is little more I can say for the moment, though I intend to share this particular story in its entirety when it is absolutely safe to do so next year. In the meantime, I have a message for anyone and everyone who needs to hear it.
I know that the state of our industry seems dire, but never forget that you are *free to choose*. No illusion of security nor promise of wealth or fame or power is worth trading away your health, your dignity, your ethics or values - and no one can force you to. Stay strong, take evidence when necessary, and find where you belong."
I’m really disappointed to learn there are still people/morale problems. I thought the whole point of rebranding 343i to Halo Studios was to signal that real changes had been made - not to cynically rebrand to paper over the problems.
I really hope the Halo CE remake is great and gets people hyped for the future of the series.
It's inevitable with the modern landscape. Even if some issues have been assuaged, new ones crop up all the time.
I'm willing to bet AI and the lack of regulation is causing substantial upset.
He said something very marking . We tend to complain a lot about the industry but deep down I realize that we never have we been offered this crazy amount of games all available for you to play now . You can literally play any sorts of games in 2025 . Nobody is forcing you to buy the latest COD or the latest BF . You’re more of a 8 bit cozy gaming guy there’s a whole niche of modern games for that . You like micromanaging there’s games for that . I feel like we have been spoiled so much we just stopped being realistic and thinking for ourselves . We follow trends cry about stuff online when you are the buyer you have the power .
....wth happened over there?
Does this confirm a new Halo by next year?
What did they want him to do that made him feel it was morally wrong or a insult to his integrity?
Well how about that, a name change doesn’t fix internal issues
Who would have thought
Lifetime sales of 343 Industries' first-person shooters, Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians, reached nearly 10 million units worldwide each.
There were reports that Halo 4 and Halo 5 had similar sales to Halo: Reach years ago. The clickbait websites and rage bait YouTubers from 2012-2016 just wanted to spread excessive negativity about the franchise for their own benefit.
I don’t know. However, I would assume around 10 million. All the Halo FPS titles have done around 10 million sales, except ODST. Halo 3, was reported to exceed 14 million copies. I still remember back in 2007-2008, Halo 3 and COD 4 would duke it out for the most played XBL game.
@Sciurus
There is NO WAY Infinite sold 10 million. Wake up dude.
Once upon a time, there was gamers on the Xbox side who actually bought games. Those times are since long gone.
Infinite has most likely not even hit 5 million sales
So let me get this straight in almost 13 years both games sold a combined 10 millions units.
Now I’m not going to use the obscured mentality and compared it to the amount of consoles sold and say it’s a failure 🤷🏿
1Victor,
Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians, reached nearly 10 million units worldwide "each."
Read it again, there is a word in there that clears up your misunderstanding.
@thesoftware720
I apologize I skimmed through the article and the headline blinded me and stuck in my mind thank you for the correction 👍👍
Halo 4 is the best multiplayer ever! It’s even better than Titanfall 2. I admit Halo 4 got CoDified but there’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other games sometimes and halo 4 did it sooooo well with that speed boost plus sword combo and SAW plus damage booth combo, holy guacamole 🥑
Some crucial improvements to halo 4 could’ve been to boost the power of the AA sentinel, and whenever matchmaking pits people against each other with an armor abilities turned off completely then the map needs to routinely spawn, plentiful, predictable, power weapons. Also, all frame rate drops are unacceptable for a halo game during split-split screen or couch co-op. Just dynamically scale the resolution of the game down but whatever happens don’t let the framer dip in a Halo game for the love of all that is holy and good!
My personal gameplay of getting 30 kills in a 4 v. 4 game of team slayer up to 60.
https://youtu.be/ZYDvior_K-...
Halo 5: Guardians lead concept artist Darren Bacon explains that the game's marketing was completely seperate to the game's development.
The marketing wasn't the issue, it just felt 343 were so bothered about getting Halo away from being known as a Bungie franchise that they tried to introduce so many changes to counter this.
It felt like they were trying to replace Chief as a character thus the big push on Agent Locke (he even got his own mini series). Chief was even in less missions in comparison.
Introduced squads which forced single player gamers to be paired up with 3 AI players over drop in / drop out co-op.
Cortana was butchered, ruining that relationship between Chief and Cortana we all liked. Would have been fine if the twist was the Didact was secretly controlling her or something but nothing. Did she come back in Infinite? Nope. Killed off screen in a sudden 180 to her villainous turn and replaced by a copy since they knew they screwed up.
Expected you to have read all the novels and the like to understand who Blue Team were and their relationship to Chief, had no build up to the characters and it felt like they expected you to like them without it being earned.
Everything they did felt like change for the sake of change, to mark it was a 343 game not a Bungie one and it's hilarious as they tried to f*** around with the multiplayer in Halo 4 to make it their own before reverting things in Guardians.
I didnt mind the switching off between John and Locke... it reminded me of Halo 2 and having the Arbiter levels to trade off to.
The story was okay for me. They had to do something different as the first three games were done and there needed to be new story going in a new direction. I get the die hard fans may not have liked it, but playing it for what it is... its perfectly fine. Its a continuation of halo 4, which itself was a nice original take on the formula.
Now bring on the disagrees.
It reminded me of Halo 2 and I honestly dislike the switching in 2 and 5. The devs should of just had cuts scenes for the Arbiter and for Locke.
Booting the ur-Didact from the games was one of the greatest narrative mistakes they made (after bringing back a logic-plagued Cortana, of course). Even if you had to read the Forerunner novels to understand his history, he was one of the most complex characters in the series, and he should have remained as an enduring part of the universe.
I'm happy that he at least got a send-off in Halo: Epitaph, but it shouldn't have gotten to that point.
No issues it's just wasn't good story at least my friend it wasn't well written.
Yeah it says a lot about the management of 343 at the time that they could have a marketing campaign be so disconnected in tone and story from the game it's supposed to be about.
I'd imagine it would be frustrating for the developers that the marketing beats seemed far cooler than what you were stuck making. Maybe it would've been better if 343 just continued the story from their previous game but nooo they couldn't be bothered to do that even once
You are off your damn rocker if you think Infinite's story is worse than 5's. Just by cleaning up 5's worse elements off-screen makes it a default improvement.
Campaign wise Halo infinite was better due to setting. (Open world, different approaches, setting and mission tasks)
story wise Halo 5 was better. Infinite was literally all over the place. It's like they scrapped the OG story and tried to piece some sht together. They unalived important ppl off screen!!! (Spoiler free) Ruining the main plot of Halo 5 and infinite like wth!!! That alone made the "story" worse than 5. They have to reboot the series now or pull some story where these characters are still alive. (I believe the end reveals 1 is.)
@Beans i disagree with that last statement doing it off screen when that was the main plot and a huge deal is the wrong move. We legit should've got a boss battle that did that. It seem so unsatisfying and anticlimactic. We were suppose to get an IRobot/terminator type of ending and instead we get some off screen sht 😒 We couldve had Halo 4 level emotion, instead it was done as filler
@Coolbeans and @phillydonjawn
Infinites story was so disjointed due to the level design. It wasn't and in my opinion still not replay able. It felt worse then the ending to Starfield.
I'm saying this as a person who's still going through playing the MCC to finish out playlists, and has Ten's of Thousands of hours in Halo since CE.
The literal ending to Starfield or the closing missions? Because some of those missions were actually pretty great in my opinion. Especially Entangled.
Halo 5 had a worse story I felt than Infinite but I agree on its lack of replayability. The single PNW biome is tiring and everything not green and foresty outside is metallic and reflective inside.
Multiplayer is solid but lags behind 5 too I feel. At least it still does get some new content even as they're openly abandoning Infinite's tech for UE.
Halo Infinite and Halo 5 both had equally bad stories that completely ignored the previous entry. There's nothing to redeem from either game. The best thing for Halo is to do reboot, let that fail, and then end the series forever.
Errrm, isn't that what they did last E3? They focused on games.that has always been the plan&i don't see Phil Spencer changing it anytime soon. I also believe their conference is titled “Game on”. That tells it all.
.......... are people really that blind to what they did last E3?
I still think x1 has way less games in the makes then ps4 everytime I come on n4g theres always new announcement for apps on microsoft side and I end up seeing game announcements for the ps4 sides
Yes, yes they do. Last year they promised gamers the world on a silver platter then only came out with a few games, all of them nothing above average. I know they have 5 Halo's this year but they need more instead of hiding behind their flagship franchise. They need more to convince me to buy an Xbone, I've already played the four Halo's they are giving the HD treatment a million times and 5 alone isn't enough to buy it.
Hopefully they will do well though.
You mean the SAME way they did at E3 last year???