| RolStoppable said: Was it really? Does your assertion line up with the facts? 1. GoldenEye sold more copies than Halo. 2. FPS games were ported from the PC to the N64. This includes big names like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem and Hexen. One generation later PC games were ported to Xbox instead of a Nintendo console, but that doesn't change that it was merely a continuation of a previous trend, not a new trend. Additionally, the N64 was also home to the successful Turok series, meaning that GoldenEye was far from being a one-off hit. 3. During the sixth generation, FPS were still primarily played on PCs. The Xbox versions of Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike fell far short of the player numbers found on the PC. 4. By the time that consoles began to take the lead in the FPS segment, Call of Duty was the king of the hill, with the Xbox 360 versions alone outpacing the sales numbers of Halo releases. So on what grounds do you credit Halo for ushering in a new era? |
1. Sure, GoldenEye sold more copies. But look at its coaching tree, to use a football analogy you're sure to appreciate. GoldenEye (8.09) --> Perfect Dark (2.52) --> TimeSplitters (.43) --> TimeSplitters 2 (1.78). Now, Halo. Combat Evolved (6.43) --> Halo 2 (8.49) --> Halo 3 (11.97) --> ODST (6.27) --> Reach (9.65).
2. As someone who owns Quake, Quake II, Duke Nukem, Hexen, Armorines, and all four Turok games on N64, I'm keenly aware that the system did well as a haven for first-person action games. But, aside from Turok and Doom 64, which were N64 exclusives, those PC ports didn't perform very well. More importantly, these were ports long after-the-fact. The N64 port of Quake, for example, came almost two years after the game launched on PC.
3. During the sixth generation, conversely, consumers saw many more first-person shooters developed specifically for consoles: Finest Hour, Big Red One, Killzone (a "Halo killer"), Far Cry Instincts, Republic Commando, etc. Sure, some series pre-dated Halo, for example Red Faction and Medal of Honor, but the rise of Halo in particular and Xbox (and Xbox LIVE) in general demonstrated that first-person shooters had a huge audience on home consoles.
4. So, by the time Xbox 360 arrived, popular FPS series started launching concurrently on PC and consoles. Call of Duty 2 landed on Xbox 360 less than a month after the PC version. Call of Duty 3, released in 2006, didn't even get a PC release. By the end of 2007, BioShock, Portal, and Call of Duty 4 had all launched on PC and Xbox 360 simultaneously.
