- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Firstly I'd like to point out why this is relevant to the PC forum and not the Halo 2 forum.
This forum assumes it's readers are PC gamers. Halo 2's forums assumes it's readers are xbox owners. My target audience is PC gamers. So I post this in PC forum. QED
Anyway, a few people are doubting that Halo's sequel will grace our PC's, and will end up being a console exclusive. I have several solid reasons why this is unlikely (I won't say definately because like everyone else I don't know). I'd be interested if anyone could point out something I've missed because there's probably something...
1) Realistically, who's going to buy an xbox just for Halo 2? If you would buy an xbox for other games aswell then you'd already have one, surely. So the purchase equates to paying a hundred poiunds or a couple of hundred dollars to play one game. It just isn't going to happen.
2) Halo and it's sequel are Microsoft Games Studio published games. That means MS make money from every game they sell, regardless of system. This in turn means that they would lose out on potential sales by restricting Halo 2's retail format. MS do not make a profit from the xbox, in fact I believe in the UK they make a loss of £10 per xbox. The profit comes entirely from game sales, therefore more games = more money, xbox exclusive = less games = less money to M$.
3) There are more PC gamers in the world than xbox gamers, by a very huge amount.
4) When Halo was released, no one said there would be a PC version. In fact, the prhase 'ONLY' on xbox' was used. Exactly the same applies to Splinter Cell, and to the later GTA titles with the obvious change in console name. The point is, games publishers like to fool people into thinking they're getting an exclusive, when the opposite is nearly always true. the GTA series is now available on PS2, xbox and PC, and who would have bought a PS2 just for GTA if they'd known that all the way back then?
5) The official statement from Bungie is that no PC version of Halo 2 is planned, YET. Why would they say Yet if they meant Never Ever?
I accept it'll be a couple of years before the possible PC version may be released. But there is a positive side to this. Firstly, they ought to have time to do a decent port. Secondly, the standard of some FPS's on PC at the moment already surpases Halo 2's, at least graphically for example Doom 3, FarCry and Half Life 2. Hopefully this will encourage Halo2's developers to up the visuals for the possible PC version, else it will have a hard time contending with the games of the next couple of years.
That point brings me to the only reason why Halo 2 might not appear on PC:
1) Too many people have problems running Halo properly, and therefore prefer the console version, and whine about the PC port. If Bungie were keen to have their most famous game always seen at it's best, with no one saying it runs badly or is poorly coded, they might opt to have it only on xbox. Which would be a real kick in the teeth for gamers who're willing and able to have PC's powerful enough to run it properly.
I imagine that such an act would aggreivate the PC games market so much that it would have a knock-on effect for future or even present Bungie or MSGS games on PC. Surely that's too big a risk for any gmes company. As far as I can see, with Halo 1 they made money off the PC version. I see no reason why they would stand to earn more money by selling to only xbox gamers than to both markets.