Is the Halo 3 Legendary Edition worth the hefty price tag?

[ziad1985]

Microsoft plans to release a http://www.actiontrip.com/#Halo9" edition of Halo 3?
anyone insane to actually pay ~130$ for this?

 

[ranger]

Well you must be willing to pay that much it you want all the extra goodies. If you are a hardcore Halo fan, then you probably won't mind doing it. But there is no reason to charge that much for just the game.

 

[GTdan]

Depends on what the extras are. I can't wait to play it though.

 

[ziad1985]

No way I'd pay that much of money, even if I eat breath, and drink the game...
prices are been more and more insane.

 

[tacosareveryyum]

$130 for a maybe 20 hour console game. What a waste of money. I can buy 3 pc games (new releases) and play them on my gaming rig that will beat any console into the ground.

 

[GTdan]

$130 for a maybe 20 hour console game. What a waste of money. I can buy 3 pc games (new releases) and play them on my gaming rig that will beat any console into the ground.

Well it actually has a bunch of extra goodies with the game. Plus, that's 20 hours for the single player campaign. Online play can last for years if you are into that. Still a lot of money but, it's not just the game you are buying.

 

[ziad1985]

but 130$?
I know it's not just the game, but that just a lot of money for a game and the additions..
I'm a RTS fanatic, I have bought every game since red alert.
I have a feeling that Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars would be one of the best RTS ever made, but if it was more then 50~60 I'm not buying..

 

[GTdan]

Yeah, it's a lot of money. That's just the Legendary Edition though. They are going to sell the game by itself for 50 bucks. Maybe 60 if you want a metallic box. The legendary edition is for geeks like me who want a replica of master chief's helmet or something crazy like that. If I had money to throw around I would buy it. But I don't so no spartan helmet for me.

Btw, C&C3 is going to be great.

 

[BoredNL]

Star Trek, The Next Generation season DVD's were outrageous too. At least the game itself won't be this expensive. Thank God there will be more than 1 version, otherwise they would charge everyone crazy prices.

I say, let the fanatics who don't mind spending a crapload of money on it spend their money..

To me, this means there will be all the more money to be put into the development of Halo4 or whatever game will replace it (assuming there will be one).

 

[ziad1985]

I feel that a great deal of piracy today is related to the pricing.
Because Sometimes you can't really find out if a game is good or not until you buy it...demos don't really cut it...
To be true, sometimes I try cracked games, if they are good enough I buy them...
If they want piracy to go, lower the price, heck if they get games to at least 50% I would buy them at random!
And I bet you that it will increase the revenue.

 

[Lee]

There is a article about it here

http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8154

 

[ziad1985]

http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8154

I see why they probably want to charge 130$, but I say "The world is going nuts"...

 

[BoredNL]

The world has been nuts for a long time now. :)

 

[GTdan]

I feel that a great deal of piracy today is related to the pricing.
Because Sometimes you can't really find out if a game is good or not until you buy it...demos don't really cut it...
To be true, sometimes I try cracked games, if they are good enough I buy them...
If they want piracy to go, lower the price, heck if they get games to at least 50% I would buy them at random!
And I bet you that it will increase the revenue.

I hear a lot of people say that. It's true that sometimes you get tricked but there are plenty of sites that review games and if your a gamer you usually know what types of games you will like anyway. I know what kinds of games I like and I do a lot of research to make sure it doesn't suck.

Some also say that they feel they are getting ripped off by only getting paper cd sleeves instead of cases and pdf versions of manuals when they buy a game so they pirate it. In a way, they do have a point too.

All in all though, the temptation of getting something for free will always rule over other reasons, IMO.

 

[tacosareveryyum]

Piracy is not as big a deal as corporations make it out to be. I would like to see the profit margins on some of these games that we are paying $50+ for. However, on the flip side, if someone was stealing my stuff I would do whatever it takes to stop them. I doubt piracy will ever be stopped. People will always find a way around the system.

 

[ziad1985]

I'm not in favor of piracy, it's wrong whatever the motive is, I do sound like a hypocrite, but it have it uses, I try the game, if I liked it I actually go buy it, If I didn't then forget the whole thing.
I don't want to go around throwing my money foolishly until I find something worthy to play..
But really, the kind of piracy I'm talking about here is in favor of games, I know that I'm not alone who do this, I can honestly say almost all of my friends do this.
This actually boost (not to a high figure) the sales, Again I repeat no one want to go around throwing money blindly until he found something he really likes..
Agree anyone?

 

[Raza]

There are 3 versions for Halo 3, the most expensive is $130 and the cheapest is $70 (I think).

 

[ranger]

70 big ones is still way too much for just a game.

 

[BoredNL]

I'm not in favor of piracy, it's wrong whatever the motive is, I do sound like a hypocrite, but it have it uses, I try the game, if I liked it I actually go buy it, If I didn't then forget the whole thing.
I don't want to go around throwing my money foolishly until I find something worthy to play..
But really, the kind of piracy I'm talking about here is in favor of games, I know that I'm not alone who do this, I can honestly say almost all of my friends do this.
This actually boost (not to a high figure) the sales, Again I repeat no one want to go around throwing money blindly until he found something he really likes..
Agree anyone?

I don't think most pirating helps out software developers.

I do think software developers can make extremely high profit margins though, which they may not deserve. But it does help bring in more competition and increase the quality of the games.

 

[ziad1985]

I don't think most pirating helps out software developers...

Not most pirating, I'm talking of one kind only...
The game is usually stripped down from almost all videos and music, to reduce size, and it's not even the whole game...

 

[renigade666]

70 big ones is still way too much for just a game.

No doubt it is to much, but its so easy for companies like Microsoft to exploit one of the biggest games ever made for the XBox by racking up the price by that much. Especially the last chapter of such a great FPS game, its not much of a surprize that it is so high.

But yea, I am considering on buying it... even if it is 70$

 

[NeoDevin]

Before you say it's way too expensive for software, you have to consider how many hours went into designing, programming, testing, as well as the cost of equipment (ie. many thousands of dollars of computer equipment), the hardware required to mass produce the cds, boxes, manuals, etc. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the profit margin was less than 50% on the first million copies or so.

 

[ranger]

Before you say it's way too expensive for software, you have to consider how many hours went into designing, programming, testing, as well as the cost of equipment (ie. many thousands of dollars of computer equipment), the hardware required to mass produce the cds, boxes, manuals, etc. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the profit margin was less than 50% on the first million copies or so.

That doesn't mater. Every gaming company has to deal with those same issues. Yet there are many other great games that are cheap. I think renigade666 gave a pretty good reason.

 

[BoredNL]

Not most pirating, I'm talking of one kind only...
The game is usually stripped down from almost all videos and music, to reduce size, and it's not even the whole game...

I doubt it. How many people will not buy the game because of this compared to how many will? If it was really such a boon to the business, then the businesses would release demos like this.

I used to do something similar before and I have to say that it did not help me buy games, but I can see how demos nowadays are a bit misleading (some more so than others). They pretty much show you the entire game, minus a few very unimportant things, and then they make it seem like there is so much more to the retail version, when in reality there really isn't. (such as a strategy game that has 4 races that are nearly exactly the same, but you only play with one race in the demo and/or the plotline thins out after the very beginning. I can't stand that.)
Phil

 

[renigade666]

They pretty much show you the entire game, minus a few very unimportant things, and then they make it seem like there is so much more to the retail version, when in reality there really isn't. (such as a strategy game that has 4 races that are nearly exactly the same, but you only play with one race in the demo and/or the plotline thins out after the very beginning. I can't stand that.)
Phil

contradiction here?
First you say that they show the entire game, with a few minor things missing... then you talk about only being able to play 1/4 of the game.
(unless you are comparing cracked version of games vs retail... can't tell :P )

I have yet to find a demo of a game that let's you explore the majority of the game play. But if there was such a demo... what would be the point of playing the retail version of it?

 

[GTdan]

Demos are very misleading. The retail versions usually require much higher system requirements and sometimes end up having bugs in it that make the game not as fun because you have to wait for a patch.

And I disagree that cracked versions of games are stripped of everything. Out of all the games that I have downloaded, only 1 so far has been stripped. That being only the music and I don't think it was intentional. These days, pirated games have all the content.

This being said, I don't think pirating helps out developers either. But the problem is that so much time and money is spent on stopping pirates, the game ends up sucking bad or not being as good as it could be. Which ends up making people pirate more. No system will be 100% secure so they should just work on making the game good. I think most people, including myself, actually like to own a game so if it's really good, they buy it.

 

[renigade666]

Talking about pirating games and having that be one main reason why the prices are so high nowadays... Can games on the 360 even be pirated?

I have not heard of a 'cracked' Xbox 360 yet. I know PS2 had pretty much all their games could be downloaded/burned and played on a modded PS2, but nothing for Xbox 360.

Any ideas anyone?

 

[GTdan]

Talking about pirating games and having that be one main reason why the prices are so high nowadays... Can games on the 360 even be pirated?

I have not heard of a 'cracked' Xbox 360 yet. I know PS2 had pretty much all their games could be downloaded/burned and played on a modded PS2, but nothing for Xbox 360.

Any ideas anyone?

Actually yes, they do have pirated 360 games. You have to mod your 360 to play them though. I think by doing that, you can't use xbox live on that particular system or else they will ban your system and gamer tag. Not sure of any other consequences though.

 

[BoredNL]

contradiction here?
First you say that they show the entire game, with a few minor things missing... then you talk about only being able to play 1/4 of the game.
(unless you are comparing cracked version of games vs retail... can't tell :P )

I have yet to find a demo of a game that let's you explore the majority of the game play. But if there was such a demo... what would be the point of playing the retail version of it?

I wasn't contradicting myself. I was pointing out how many game demos are misleading. The demo may show one part of the game, which is almost mirrored elsewhere in the game. Like that one race in an RTS that has equal counterparts in the other "races." You've practically already played the whole game, you just didn't realize it. When you buy the full version and begin to play, you are horribly let down because all of the races are the same, except for some graphical changes to how the individual units appear. Another example would be where you might play one level of a game, thinking it was awesome, but then when you buy the retail version, all 12 levels are almost exactly the same, with very little variation. So again, you already pretty much played the full version by playing that one level and there isn't much more to be gotten out of the rest of the levels, except perhaps a headache from the monotony.

I can see how a trial period for playing a game would be more fair than a misleading demo for a gamer such as myself, but I don't see how cracked versions of games actually boost sales. I used to administrate for a group that was involved in this sort of thing, and I'm sure that pretty much none of the 500 people bought any video games unless they had to. I'm speaking from experience here, not ideological wishful thinking.

Phil

 

[Stevedye56]

Id pay 130 for it. It does have some good extras. Anyone know if Bungie is responsible for making the game again? If they are I might not be as interested considering all of the glitches that were still in Halo 2

 

[chaoseverlasting]

70 bucks is a lot of money for a game man. Specially if you can get the same game for 2 bucks. A lot of the time, some of my friends buy the game and after they're done with it, I borrow it off of them. When I buy a game, I lend it to them after I am done with it. It makes spending 70 bucks on a game completely pointless.

I get that companies spend a lot on developing the game. They have to hire people and pay for the computers and yada yada yada. But at the end of the day, the consumer doesn't look at how much it cost the company, the consumer looks at how much its going to cost HIM.

And frankly, if I bought a game for 70 bucks, and my neighbour bought it for 2, I'd feel like a total idiot. Even pirated games have pretty much everything on them. Infact, the only medium where information does get cut out is on DVD's. They remove the extras on multipack DVD's to get as many movies in on one DVD as possible.

 

[ziad1985]

Few years ago, back in school, me and my friend used to buy the games together, to save money.
we were just kids, there was no way for us to be able to pay a lot of money for games.

 

[GTdan]

It's actually $60 for just the game, $70 for the collector's edition, and $130 for the Legendary Edition with Spartan Helmet. May still be a lot of money but at least I know the game is going to be awesome. Unlike many other crap games that are the same price. I'd rather own a game as good as Halo instead of pirate it.

Oh, and yes, Bungie is in charge again. The single player campaign is guaranteed to be good. Luckily, they are having a very long Beta period for multiplayer so hopefully, that won't have the glitches it did in Halo2.

 

[BoredNL]

I think Halo is more hyped up than it is actually good. Don't get me wrong, the game is fun to play, but it really is not nearly as good as people make it seem and I think it could be a LOT better than it is.

Halo 2 had, what, like maybe 10 types of enemy units? A few more weapons and vehicles? (which I think should've been in halo 1 to begin with and was a cheap move not to include). Duel wielding? Halo 2 was really more like an add-on for halo 1, not a whole new game, but priced as a whole new game.

Even with Halo two, you still couldn't make public servers with custom settings and you are PAYING for Xbox Live.. I can do this for free with other games on my PC. You have to somehow amass a bunch of "friends" with strangers online to do this.. How annoying.

I'm a big Halo fan, believe it or not, and I can't wait till Halo 3 comes out, but seriously, let's put things into perspective here. It is not the greatest game ever, it is the most hyped up and advertised game ever. Quake 1 had more innovative design elements in it than Halo, more levels, more creatures, more scary scenes, etc, etc. Aliens vs Predator had more modes of play. Unreal Tournament had novel weapons and expansive levels with much more room for different styles of gameplay. TFC had a lot more replayability. And all of these games came out quite a long time before Halo, so you would think that Halo would've improved upon all of these factors immensely.. and yet.. it didn't. It is fun though, so I'll still buy it.

 

[GTdan]

Well if you are going to talk only about content (weapons, units, etc), yes the game is pretty simplistic. In that perspective, true, it can be considered just an add on or expansion. I think what really sets it apart though is the storyline and gameplay. It may be based on a typical alien invasion theme but the game really plays well through the story. It really sucks you in with every aspect of the game. That's rare these days and that I think is what sets Halo apart. UT was basically all multiplayer. The Doom and Quake series probably rival Halo in terms of story (and others too I guess) which is probably 1 reason why those games did well too.

About multiplayer though: It turns out that they decided the matchmaking system used in halo (and other games) is better on average than the typical PC like multiplayer where you set up a server and make it public. They deliberately chose it this way because it would be easier for people who are not as savvy to just jump into online play (one reason why there are so many stupid kids and cheaters playing) and because they thought that it would be a better experience for people who don't have a lot of online friends (I read all this on the Bungie website I think; or forums, I can't remember). I think it worked. There are ALOT of people on xbox live now.

That said, it's not without its problems. There are more cheaters now and obnoxious kids yelling and screaming and cursing over the headset. You can't just boot them, only mute their mic sometimes. Lag, glitches, etc. They probably should have included the option of having custom public servers like you say instead of having to horde a bunch of unknown people on your friends list.