VAMatt said:
As I said, I can make a case for GTA 3. That said, I don't see what your sales metric means in terms of significance. Clearly, GTA has sold many more units. But, I don't think that's relevant. First of all, it's a multi-platform game. But, more importantly, it wouldn't matter if Halo sold only one single copy. It's influence on the FPS genre, which I think is certainly the most significant genre of the last couple of decades from a business perspective, was huge. Yes, FPS games existed. But, your examples I think actually point out how significant Halo is. If you play a major FPS released today and compare it to any of the games that you mentioned there, they're going to feel hugely different. But, play Halo CE, and it feels very similar. That's because after Halo CE, most FPS games started to drift toward the Halo style. You do make a good case for GTA and it's impact on game design with the open world. I agree that it is significant in that regard. And like I said, I can see how it belongs in the conversation. |
I don't really get what you mean? Is it the regenerating health mechanic? I'm replaying Half-Life (Black Mesa) and it's not hugely different from Halo or any other modern fps, apart from actually having to manage health and shield. (And thankfully not be limited to 2 weapons at a time)
I always found the regenerating health a cop out, making the genre less fun. (Same with the weapon carrying restriction, but no easy shortcut keys on controller) Regenerating health took all the danger out of it since you only need to hide for a few seconds to keep going forever. Halo did popularize the health regen, yet I see that more as a negative :/ I don't want to dis the series as I did enjoy the campaigns a lot and had tons of co-op fun playing them. Maybe the big influence is in multiplayer as I never got into competitive multiplayer with a controller. Most I played online was Resistance 2 8 player co-op for a couple weeks. All my competitive fps gaming was basically over after I grew out of Unreal Tournament 2004. So forgive me that I know very little of Halo multiplayer.
In terms of significance, reaching 5x as many people is significant. Halo is also on PC, it's a multi platform game just like GTA. GTA is still top dog in its genre, while CoD dwarfs Halo nowadays.
Halo had a peak when Halo Infinite’s multiplayer platform was released as a free-to-play game in 2021, but it was a short-lived success. Now, only a few thousand people seem to play Halo Infinite, while millions connect to Call of Duty’s current games: COD Mobile, Warzone 2.0, and Modern Warfare II. If we use Steam as a representative example, we can see that – at the time of publishing – Halo Infinite has a 30-day average player count of just 2,800 users. Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 alone has a 30-day average of 67,000.
Halo was hugely significant for XBox, but it mostly seemed to be in the context of the console war, with the term "halo killer" coming up every time a new fps came along. To me Far Cry in 2004 was already the 'Halo killer' and felt significantly different from Halo. I was looking forward more to a new Far Cry than Halo. But that's solely based on the single player experience.
Another metric comparing Halo and GTA, google trends
That huge spike is when GTA5 came out. I wonder how big it will be when GTA6 launches.
