Peter Suciu

Must Play 2008: With No Halo, What’s Next?
February 12, 2008

Last fall saw the debut of Halo 3, an event that former Microsoft Game Studio VP Peter Moore labeled the biggest day in entertainment history, and even called the franchise “this generation’s ‘Star Wars’.” For the release of the game in Sept. 2007, Microsoft pulled out all the stops with major events in New York, Miami, Seattle and Los Angeles, while more than 10,000 retailers opened their doors at midnight.

The game experienced fantastic sales and broke all records for first day sales for a game — and was even bigger than the biggest movie openings. Of course, when considering the latter point, it needs to be mentioned that most big movie releases had legs, while sales for Halo 3 steadily declined after the initial sales. More importantly, games don’t have a second life similar to home video, pay TV or premium cable the way movies do, so once the big sales die down, the game’s profitability decreases.

Still, what Halo 3 did was very impressive. The success can be credited to a solid mix of buzz and hype. The former being genuine interest from the game community, while the latter being efforts by Microsoft’s flaks and marketing teams to generate said buzz artificially. The hype machine worked overtime, but the fan interest was extremely high.

But there is a side effect of Halo 3, namely what does that leave for 2008? In part because of last year’s scaled down Electronic Entertainment Expo, and in part because so much hype from Microsoft was focused on Halo 3, there isn’t any major marquee title waiting in the wings this time around. And while it would be safe to say that after Halo 3 it would be hard to have as big a title this year, there is surprisingly very little of significance on the horizon.

Now, before anyone jumps and throws out an endless list of games, yes, we know about Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii, Devil May Cry 4, Soldier of Fortune 4 Payback and Lost Odyssey (despite the feedback I do actually see and play a lot of games!). But the point is that all these games combined will likely generate far less interest than Halo 3. Few stores — if any — will open at midnight to sell Lost Odyssey, no matter how good the game will be … and honestly, this could be one of those “next big thing titles.”

But the fact remains that 2008 only has one major truly significant title so far, and it is arriving very early in the year. This is the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, a game that was delayed from last fall, and will be arriving on April 29. The GTA series has been big news since GTA III arrived in the fall of 2000 as one of the launch titles for the PlayStation 2, and the follow-ups including GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas scored as much for controversy as for innovative game play.

The question is whether GTA IV will do it again? Chances are this could be the game to beat in 2008. For one thing, while the GTA series had been a PlayStation2 exclusive and only arrived on the Xbox and PC at a later date, GTA IV will arrive day and date on both the PS3 and Xbox 360. This could make it the biggest title of the year, simply because it is a cross-platform game. It promises more of the same game play that has made the series such a smash.

On the flip side, the title has been plagued by some nasty rumors that the developers had a difficult time during the production process. In the movie business, problems can equal lower returns, so we’ll have to wait on this point. But it is worth noting that GTA IV originally was delayed (or so some rumors say) because of issues with the lack of a hard drive on the lower tier Xbox 360 units. Here is a case where Microsoft should have allowed Rock Star, the game’s developers, to create a game that required a hard drive, and owners with the lower Xbox 360 systems (those without a hard drive) should have been forced to upgrade.

But the story gets more interesting because later rumors suggested some of the delays were based on issues with development problems with the PS3. So whatever the case, the game was delayed. Game delays are not uncommon, and nor are these as bad as those in the film industry, but the delay wasn’t good news — other than allowing there to be no direct competition with Halo 3. The good news for Microsoft was that the company earned a three-peat of sorts in the second half of 2008 with BioShock, Halo 3 and finally Mass Assault.

So the next question is whether GTA IV can score in the spring? The game isn’t headed into a holiday season. Will gamers want to jack cars and beat up gangsters rather than getting some fresh spring air? And do I really need to ask that question? More importantly, has the GTA genre been watered down with too many clones? Numerous games, including The Godfather, Scarface and most notably Saints Row, have built on the open-ended worlds of GTA. While it has been three and a half years since GTA: San Andreas, these other games have nicely filled the void. There is even a Saints Row 2 on the way.

All hope shouldn’t be lost for 2008. There will still be Madden, Midnight Club, Highlander, Kill Zone, End War, Tomb Raider and a nearly endless list of games. Will any be as big as Halo 3? Probably not, but when Halo debuted at Macworld in 1999 who could knew how much Master Chief would change gaming!

Posted by Peter Suciu on February 12, 2008 | Comments (3)