More on Halo Reach...quote on Industrygamers.com

I'm still playing Halo Reach though I haven't had time to play the MP component yet. I'm sure I'll get trounced at first but then start holding my own after a while, at which point I'll likely move onto another MP game on console just because I have to keep playing lots of games. That said, Halo Reach is by far my favorite Halo game. Without spoiling it much, I liked the small nod to Battlestar Galactica in one sequence where you fly the fighter in near Reach orbit defending capital ships. The voice chatter over the comm is pretty cool and borrows somewhat from BSG. I suppose that's more military common speak, but I'm not a military guy and the feel of it was just right. Anyway, another small reason to play the game.

Meanwhile, I was quoted recently on Industrygamers.com about whether the Halo franchise has peaked. Essentially the question is if another developer an step in and make future Halo games for Microsoft that will be as good or sell as well as Bungie's Halo games. My essential answer is no. It's going to be tough to fill those shoes and even another good developer will not be able to reproduce the exact same magic that went into Bungie's efforts.

I made a reference to Treyarch making Call of Duty games (CoD 3 and CoD: WaW) that weren't as good as Infinity Ward's games. That doesn't mean Treyarch is not a good developer. I didn't like CoD3 that much, perhaps because I was sick of WWII in Europe / France games by that time and I felt the game was a little too intense, i.e., it didn't have the right pacing that an Infinity Ward game has. However, I really liked World at War, Treyarch's second CoD game. It's really hard for another developer to come into a brand with super high quality that it did not originate and make something better. WaW used the much improved tech from CoD4:MW and the multiplayer was great.

Anyway the real point is that I'm looking forward to Black Ops due out Nov 9. Yes it is set in the Vietnam era (right?) and despite few shooter games in that setting and none getting it right, not even BF:Vietnam (it was basically BF:1942), I think this game is going to be good. Will it score in the 90s? Don't know. Don't care. I just think the potential for something like this is high and it's not a crawl-in-the-mud type Vietnam shooter. It appears to have at least a taste of the magic IW created in MW1&2 judging by some of the sequences I've seen, so I've got high hopes. I know there was a ton of controversy this year over Activision's handling of IW, but as far as Black Ops goes, I still hope that stuff didn't distract Treyarch's dev cycle on the game and that it comes out well.

Halo Reach update

I forgot to post that a big part of why this game is selling well is

not just the fact that it's a Halo game, but Microsoft is promoting it heavily, such as running TV spots during NFL games in the US, one of the last bastions of where live TV gets TiVo'd at a lower % so that consumers have a higher probability of watching the commercials. I didn't even like the Halo Reach commercials that much from a creative standpoint, but for a game like this it is more about mass awareness among the near-core and non-core shooter player base on the 360 platform than it is winning a Cloe for creativity. It's 'bout reach people. Audience reach. Halo audience reach.

Meanwhile, that wasn't the only thing going on during Halo Reach's launch week. When I went to check out Target I found that the store was offering a $20 gift card purchase of Halo Reach, except they were sold out resulting in many sad pandas for sure. But that wasn't all. Target was giving away $20 gift cars for Halo Wars (the real time strategy game on Xbox 360), Halo 3 and the last Halo game, Halo 3: ODST. That's a lot of discounting on a lot of Halo.

But then I went to Best Buy. Sure enough, they had Halo Reach

0n hand. At first I was bummed Target didn't have it because who couldn't put a $20 gift card to Target to good use? Was I really going not get the $20 gift card and buy it? After reading how much people liked Reach over ODST I decided I should just get it. To my pleasant surprise Best Buy was offering the same deal: a $20 gift card with purchase. YES!!!! Later that night I saw a TV spot advertising as that fact. And on the Best Buy website they were making the same offer. Oops...I should have done my research first.

But thinking back to Target, I noticed that the retailer was offering $20 gift cards with purchase of Mafia II and Red Dead Redemption, both Take 2 Interactive games. Across two major retailers, who both happen to be HQ'd in Minneapolis, there is a very similar discounting strategy going. Best Buy probably planned it first since it national TV spots ready when Halo Reach launched. For Target to match that it wouldn't take much time or effort to print up placards for in-store display. The problem for them was that they didn't have the same quantities Best Buy had, and that's probably a lot of lost sales. I often hear that such discounting is really a bad strategy for retailers because they actually generate negative margins per sale with the gift card, but in reality the gift cards get the consumer back in the store and buying more. Further still, I'm also thinking that the retailers themselves, and not MSFT and TTWO, funded these discounts.

Halo Reach

Halo Reach went on sale worldwide on September 14. As the defining brand of the Xbox consoles, it's no surprise that in the first 24 hours Microsoft has confirmed that US plus Europe sales were a combined $200 million. Given the starting price of $60 for standard copies and then higher prices for collectors editions, legendary editions, ultra epic editions, 2 Brutes 1 Spartan editions, the general consensus is that this represents around 3million units in a day. And on one platform. The last mega blockbuster like this was Modern Warfare 2 that released Nov 10, 2009. Back on Nov 11 Activision confirmed MW2 sold 1.2 million units in the UK alone in the first day (cross platform). The US + Europe total was estimated around $500 million in sales for the equivalent period. So no, Halo Reach might not be as big as Modern Warfare 2 obviously, and it might not be as big as Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 alone. But so what. I'm not exactly a big Halo fan, but it is nice to see that one of the few games this year expected to be blockbuster actually become a blockbuster. It certainly won't save the US retail component of the overall industry from its likely full year decline vs. 2009, but it is definitely welcome news that the game has sold well.

For me, I got a copy and while it does look and feel like past Halo games, somehow this is my favorite of all them.

Game Center goes live today...

I'm currently updating my iPhone 4 to get the new Game Center. I'm wondering if this is going to transform my use of iPhone games. Stay tuned...

New Apple live event today

So I am not at the Apple event going on (right now as I type this) but I'm keeping an eye on it on a couple different live blogs. I'm going to bulletize a list of takeaways...here we go...

1. 300 worldwide Apple stores in 10 countries...coming soon to Spain. Bueno!
2. 120 million iOS devices shipped. That's iPhone + iPad + iPod Touch devices.
3. Activating 230,000 iOS devices per day. Would love to see how that number fluctuates on a daily basis. Does not include upgrades. Interesting.
4. iOS4.1 comes out today. Fabulous. Mostly bug fixes it seems. Good. Available next week and it will be $10. Just kidding it's free.
5. Game Center. Remember that? I blogged about it months ago and have been waiting for its release ever since. GC supposed to allow multiplayer, have leaderboards and achievements like Xbox Live. It will also do friends lists just like in XBL or PSN, but if you are lame and have no friends it will do matchmaking for MP games. Pretty cool. No more news on GC for now other than it supposedly ships with iOS4.1. Very interesting.
6. They announced iOS 4.2 (um...before 4.1 comes out? Okay....) 4.2 is iPad focused to allow multitasking, folders and Gamer Center to run on it. And wireless printing. ZOMG! 4.2 available in Nov. Boo!
7. AirPlay. Allows you to stream audio and video to other devices. Sounds like my CrappleTV that is actually no longer crappy since it finally works...and works pretty well at that.
8. And the big talking point for today seems to be the iPod. 275 million iPods sold to date according to jobs. I'm guessing the average iPod owner has owned more than 1 iPod in their life...maybe 1.2 or 1.5 iPods on average? In other words, less than 275 million people have owned or currently own an iPod. Still...is that 200million ppl? 250million? 150million? Any way you slice it that is a lot of people.
9. New iPod shuffle coming .... at $49. Sounds nice.
10. New iPod nano will be as small as the shuffle (roughly speaking) but will feature a multitouch interface like an iPhone. Sweet. And 24 hour battery life. Disclosed some other stuff on the nano but who cares.
11. iPod Touch. It's now the best selling iPod it seems and he's talking a lot about games.

So now let's break off and talk about iOS gaming and iPod Touch and stuff...

1. More iPod Touches (i'm going to call them "iTouch" to save typing time...you get the idea. Apple, please don't sue me I own over a dozen Apple products) like how more iTouches have been sold than Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP have sold combined.
2. 1.5 billion games and entertainment apps have been downloaded onto iTouches.
3. New iTouches will have same improvements the iPhone 4 has...retina display, A4 CPU, iOS4.1 with Game Center (that I assume ships next week for iPhones and iTouches), front facing camera and Face Time.
4. Available next week. 8gb model $229

And there was some other stuff about Ping, dubbed Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes.