News Microsoft to expand Halo franchise further

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/01/30/microsoft-making-more-halo-games/1

Microsoft has announced that it isn't done with Halo just yet and is still going to expand the franchise further.

 

Milking that cash cow in full force, sigh, this is what gaming has come to too much IMO. Take a good thing (Albeit overrated) and squeeze so much out of it gets saturated. In other news another COD game is in the works, lol.

 

I hope the franchise dies a slow and painful death, to teach those involved that milking something this hard just ends up with some bearded tossers sucking on dry udders.

 

If this game just has a few extra guns and better graphics that will not stop the bashing of them trying to milk it. It better be beyond anything else.

 

Well they've already released several books (first one was good, second one was **** as it was basically the first game in book form, not read the rest) and then there was the movie which is on hold. So this guy is basically saying, hey, we're gonna carry on with what we're already doing.

I don't see the problem with it so long as it's not just an FPS as Master Chief (which none of the future games seem to be), they're going in different directions with gameplay styles for a universe that has a lot of fans.

 

Second book was awful, I agree, but the rest are much better.

The Halo games are excellent shooters with a great storyline. If it was released by anyone but Microsoft, I'm sure nobody would be like "OMGOMG THEY R DOIN IT FER MONIES". Calm down, they're good games.

 

hang on..... i know there milking it, but what about call of duty, res evil, GT, MGS.......

every developer milks a series of games, if they continue to sell well, expect more sequels as i'm sure with the current state of play they will all be.

roll on COD8, MGS7, res evil 12, and halo 117 )

 

No one said they were the only ones.....
COD is the worst IMO, once a year we ge ta new game that has not changed since COD 1, COD has become more overrated then HALO IMO, in fact, perhaps the most overrated game franchise ever.

Gaming unfortunately has become this, more and more like the music industry, sticking to safe trends and appeal to the widest main stream audience as possible.

 

I really do not see the issue with them "milking" it. If people want to play it, then they are going to make it. They would be fools not to. How many sequels have you wished for and not got? This is what happens when you keep getting those sequels.

If you don't like it don't play it.
Mainstream game makers are always going to make mainstream games whether they are all in one franchise or not.

 

The Eric Nylund Halo books are all quite good really. They're not Niven or Asimov, but they make for an engaging read.

More of these please.

 

I'm looking forward to new Halo games/books/movies/etc. It's not the best game and stuff, but at least I can enjoy the storyline somewhat and I find the way the combat works to be more interesting than most other FPS.

Here's to Halo 4

 

The problem with that is that devs making main stream games now stop trying new things, at least in the past there was more attemptes to do somethign new, now even devs who once used to stay away from making main stream games are hoping on the bandwagon. Thus, games are becoming less and less about innovation, moving things forward, but tending too much to the safe console crowd.

 

For me, it's not the fact that they make the sequels, it's the fact that the follow-on to the first game has been so pathetic.

I really loved the first Halo, I played it for hours on end, both PC and Xbox. It was great. The story wasn't half bad, either. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. It found an acceptable middleground for "Those are the badguys, shoot them" and "This is a story, pay attention.", everything was fine and dandy.

Halo 2 felt like someone had realised Halo was the second coming of christ, and forgot to polish the game before they ran it down to the local stores.

Halo 3 felt like Halo 2, but even less time had gone into it before they ran down to the store. Two and three felt horribly unfinished.

On top of which, I feel certain that both two and three slowly decreased in length. Three felt like the kind of length I would have expected from £15-£20 DLC, not a £40 full blown release.

They had no difficulty curve, playing easy was akin to playing Legendary. The first game, there was a challenge between the difficulty levels, it was genuinely harder. In two, there was still a challenge, but there was not so much of one. In three it's gone entirely. I have been playing H:CE on the PC recently, and Legendary is harder than the same setting in 2, and far harder than the same setting in 3.

ODST is likely to follow that trend, although, I won't be buying it, as I've had enough of giving money to this franchise.

 

Games like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid already had preplanned future releases way before their success. The first 13 FF stories were written way before their EPIC success. Metal Gear Solid has been Hideo Kojima's baby since the 80s and if you follow all the stories (Metal Gear-MGS4) they all link up. Resident Evil was planned to start with the Raccoon City accident and end with the death of Umbrella but new producers ****ed up the storyline (which has now been restored in RE5). The three listed above already had their master plan and IMO weren't milked like COD, Mario, Sonic and GTA. All three have evolved over time. All three will be in the history books as gaming Heroes.

 

The problem with milking games franchises is the same as film franchises.
Almost every games/film franchise that has had 3 or more release's, it's always been the first one thats been the best and the rest have slowly declined usually into something horrible.
So we get less & less and eventually get left with a bad memory of once great titles and very empty pockets.

They really need to start thining up new ideas

 

I agree, it is getting ridiculous now, almost everything is planned as a trilogy before the first game is out now, and by the second and third games in the series they do nothing new, just the same thing with minor tweaks. There were always sequesls, but now it seems everything is, even just a few years ago devs were still making mainstream games but releasing other more less dumbed down games, now that is becoming fewer and fewer. Not to sound like a PC snob here, but consoles and their popularity and how even average games sell 3-4 million copies on them are the main reason. Everything now is geared towards being easy and to appeal to a wide main stream audience. Hell, look at fable, a very hyped RPG that is also one of the most simple RPG's I have ever played, games can still have depth and complexity and yet be easy to get into, seems to be a lost art these days.

 

I think the gaming companies forgot that their casual gamer might turn into a hardcore gamer. So when the casual gaming boom brought in millions of players they kept making casual games. Now that the boom has leveled out the casual gamer is looking for innovation. Which for must of us, we've already played through years of innovation. ex. Doom-Duke-Quake-HL-Crysis-?. A good story with gameplay doesn't hurt either.

 

Will we ever see another original Halo-type game? One that is fresh, innovative, polished and what the market wants as a whole? Seriously. This comes as no surprise to me, and don't get me wrong: I think Halo (for as popular as it is) has justified its existence, but MS needs to seriously find another franchise b/c I'm tired of it...

 

Thast the issue, milking franchises ends up having the opposite effect, too much of the same thing, familarity breeds contempt, and it ends up tarnishing what was once a classic game.

Halo was not innovative, it did nothing new, it was just the first shooter on console to really do what it did, but it certainly did not innovate. I guess from a console standpoint it did, shooters on console were rare back then, but for the genre it did nothing.

 

I'm a huge Halo fan myself and I know I'm getting tired of the whole thing. I've read the first 4 books and I'm reading the 5th but I have to admit that the games and the books have all decreased their quality after every iteration. I don't think I'll be buying the 6th book since I'm not really liking the 5th one that much, but I'm looking forward to the other Halo games as I think that since they are changin the focus of the games the experience might be different enough so it doesn't feel like the same old game