Ghosts of Tsushima, a game many consider to be one of the best titles released by Playstation this generation, a massive success and huge step up in quality for developer Sucker Punch is fantastic work by a great studio.
People point to the sales of the game as a sign of its success. People consider Sea of Thieves a huge success for Microsoft. They point to the sales of Forza Horizon that it's a success for Microsoft, and Playground is doing an amazing job.
Ghosts of Tsushima sold just over 5 million copies since its launch in July.
news
www.gamasutra.com
Halo 4 had a large $220 opening, was the third best selling game of the year in the U.S. that year, and apparently sold over 5 million copies in the USA alone, and has apparently sold nearly 9 million copies overall. An example of what it did at launch. No shame in being beat by Call of Duty in sales.
Halo 4 has sold nearly 10 million copies, near the latest God of War that crossed 10 million...
'Halo 4' grosses $220 million-plus but can't beat 'Call of Duty'
www.latimes.com
Halo 5, the game everybody says is this big failure, here is 343's Frank stating that it sold 5 million copies at 3 months.
It did under 1M in its first NPD month. So? All their sales don't come from Physical US and it was like 4 days coverage. it did 950k physical in the US in 4 days, and you think it took them 3 months to get another 50k worldwide + including digital? lol
www.neogaf.com
Halo Master Chief Collection, not even including the Xbox releases, sold almost 2 million on Steam.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection reached the milestone of nearly 2 million copies sold in just its first two days of its Steam launch.
www.dualshockers.com
Any other studio with these accolades would not be described as a failure, or a "terrible" developer.
Last of us 2 sold like 4 million copies I think on release, and I think is being outsold by Ghosts of Tsushima.
How exactly is the criteria for success for every other major game out there, particularly major Sony first party exclusives, suddenly different when it comes to, by the numbers, easily Microsoft's top selling game studio that is doing equally successful numbers? How are they a trash or terrible developer when they keep putting out enough quality that people are buying the games in the many millions of numbers equal or better to many of Sony's biggest and best titles,
and Halo 5 did it's 5 million+ on a significantly smaller install base compared to PS4. Does this fact not mean a thing? What do you think Halo 5 would have sold if it Xbox One had sold as much as Playstation 4 did? Surely quite a bit more than it did.
The outer worlds by Obsidian is considered a big success, and has sold over 2 million copies, and that's even while being a multi-platform title that released on PS4 and PC. How is 343 who accomplished this with Master Chief Collection just on Steam a failure of a studio?
Even the highly successful Forza Horizon 4 did over 2 million it's first week, and I believe by now has crossed 7 million or so? How is Playgrounds a success but 343 a failure? It makes no sense.
343 are being judged by a set of rules that are so strange because even with the complaints and the whining about the choices they make for the Halo titles they've put out, they keep putting up the big numbers regardless. And no, it isn't enough to just say "Oh, well, that's just cause it's Halo" They're putting up the numbers.
And for the people who will use player count as a sign, there's a crap ton of other things out there in the MP shooter arena for people to play than there ever was back when Halo was seen as the dominant console shooter by far. Maybe, just maybe, the Halo community is much more interested in the epic campaign, playing a some MP and then moving on to something new than people care to admit? Is it bad for Ghosts of Tsushima that many have started playing other things? What about the Last of Us II? What about God of War? Yes, I know Halo is a major MP franchise also, but I don't feel that does anything to diminish the success 343 has had with the franchise. People sometimes buy, enjoy and just move on to the next. And I stress again the increased competition in this space compared to any previous time. Halo MP going free to play I think is the right move and something which will have a pretty major impact.
Another overlooked factor because we can already play Halo on PC is that Halo Infinite will be the very first Halo game to ever launch on PC simultaneously with the Xbox console release.
Back to the point. By no common sense measure is 343 somehow Microsoft's worst developer or a developer that isn't getting the job done. Countless studios would trade places for their so called "abysmal" track record in a heart beat. Any notion 343 is among Microsoft's worst developers is utter bs. Their games are well optimized, amazingly well optimized, their games are beautiful. Say what you want about them, but their games are all beautiful, which some failed to ever admit until it was useful for trolling Halo Infinite's initial gameplay reveal, which admittedly needed to be so much better.
But remember one thing: that Halo Infinite people saw was never released, and still has nearly 7-9 more months left in development. What's the next argument? Resources that they have? Even with the resources they have their results have not at all been terrible or subpar.
343 is selling the same numbers that Sony's best games are, and they're doing it with a significantly smaller install base of consoles.
Rant over.
