+100 (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Thursday, October 29, 2015, 18:37 (3408 days ago) @ bluerunner

343 basically said that they don't really care about the old fans, and then tried to lure them back with Blue team, to reportedly weak results. How has Halo 5 done sales-wise?

I feel the same way about Halo as I do about NASCAR. I used to be a die hard fan. I spent tons of money road tripping to races, and spent every Sunday afternoon watching races. Then Brian France took over and made it clear he didn't care about the old fans. He did everything he could to get rid of the good ol'boy image and detach it as far as he could from the South.

For instance, he took one of the greatest traditions, the Labor Day Southern 500, away from Darlington and moved it to LA because he thought he could get a bigger market. It backfired. It was an insult to the old fans because it showed he didn't understand the traditions that they loved, and he then took something stripped of its roots and tried to sell it to a market that wasn't that interested. People came and checked out the race, but the crowd size didn't have any staying power. They satisfied their curiosity and moved on.

I felt that way about Halo 4. It felt like they wanted to turn Halo into something they thought could pull in the CoD and other games crowd, and in doing so turned off the old fans. Those new people came in, checked it out, then went back to whatever else they were into before. Meanwhile the old fans lost interest because it lost its original charm.

Funny you put it that way. When Halo 4 came out, I defended it a lot. It was different, but that didn't necessarily mean that it was bad. Heck, I was the first HBOer to hit rank 130, remember? I played it a lot... And then Black Ops 2 came out, and did everything that was "new" in Halo much better (and it also has what is probably the best Theater mode in any game before or since, until Black Ops 3 is released in nine days).
That week, the Halo 4 population plummeted. As you said, the new people satisfied their curiously, then left.
343 responded by rounding up the MLG folks (such as Bravo), and having them tweak and direct the changes to the game... To disastrous results. I really liked Halo 4 at launch, but the weapon tuning killed it for me so fast, that my joy Patrick Swayze'd out of it.
I'm not even that big of a CoD fan, but given that Halo 4 was the only alternative, I ended up just playing that.

And now, 343 doesn't put population counters in their games. Tells you something...