Halo 2 Expansion....

Dundradal

Dundradal

Frog Blast the Vent Core!
just recently broke over at Bungie.net that they are releasing 9 new maps (although warlock apparently is a port of wizard) on Xbox Live and on CD over the next months.

Now it's not that I don't love Bungie to death, as their games have been keeping me entertained and entranced since the release of Pathways into Darkness. But $20 for 9 maps? That's almost half the cost of halo 2 and you get 9 maps and a documentary on their making and a teaser side story....for $20....Bungie goes onto answer why they have to charge money and such, but I wouldn't have minded seeing at least a double digit map increase, not 20, but at least 12-15, essentially doubling the maps of halo 2.

The screenshots of the new maps look amazing and I can't wait to get them, but I wish there wasn't always a price. You can get the maps for free, but you have to be paying for a Live account and even then they come out in groups of 3.

It was nice when game programmers used to be able to release new maps and things over the net at no cost. All 3 Marathon games got at least new bungie maps after their release and they were always free. Sucks to see what MS ownership can sometimes spawn as a consequence.
 
There is a map loosely based on Wizard, but it looks quite a bit more expanded and in a much different setting. I don't see how 12 maps is very different from 9. Either way, you're paying less than half the price of the original game for doubling or almost doubling the amount of playing fields.

I don't get this ridiculous idea that paying for new levels you can download is evil. Expansion packs usually cost money. The main difference is that you have the option of getting this one without going to the store. And as you pointed out, the maps will be made available for free on XBox Live (though you just made up that "groups of 3" thing). If you're some weirdo who doesn't already have Live for the multitude of other great benefits it supplies for a cheap $3 a month, then you're lucky to be able to buy the disc at all. Very few console games have this option. People scrambled to grab the 1-2 Socom maps on the monthly Playstation magazine cover discs at like $8 a pop. Hell, if you're that cheap, you can just use one of those XBox Live free trial things that get included with games like AOL discs periodically.
 
Dundradal said:
It was nice when game programmers used to be able to release new maps and things over the net at no cost. All 3 Marathon games got at least new bungie maps after their release and they were always free. Sucks to see what MS ownership can sometimes spawn as a consequence.
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Lemme see... Halo 2, which (judging from your post - I haven't played the game myself) features 12-15 maps, and costs $40 (on amazon.com). Now Bungie is offering you 9 new maps for $20 - that's 2/3rds of the number of the maps the original game had, for half of the original game's price. And a documentary of some sort, within that$20. Yeah, you're really being ripped off there, buddy. Better call the police :p.

Also, it's really getting tiresome for people to blame Microsoft for everything. Microsoft has nothing too do with the decision to charge money for this expansion. Back in the days of Marathon, one guy could churn out a new map in a couple of hours, in his spare time (remember those fun-filled days of churning out Doom levels for no reason other than the fact that you could?). Today, it's different - a new map is not something you can make in two hours. It's something that three or four people work on for a few days. And somebody has to pay them for it - so of course, it becomes necessary to charge the customer money.
 
Microsoft and other big companies are just trying to make money, like everyone else is. They just happen to be better at it.
 
Ahem, just to point out...all 9 maps will be available to download for free at the end of the summer. Don't be spouting off without knowing the facts. The $20 for the packaged version of the new maps is basically just there to cover the costs of pushing that out to the audience without xbox live. Now'd it be nice to do that for free but things like that are expensive so charging the $20 is something I'd expect from any software company. If you don't want it, don't buy it.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Ahem, just to point out...all 9 maps will be available to download for free at the end of the summer. Don't be spouting off without knowing the facts. The $20 for the packaged version of the new maps is basically just there to cover the costs of pushing that out to the audience without xbox live. Now'd it be nice to do that for free but things like that are expensive so charging the $20 is something I'd expect from any software company. If you don't want it, don't buy it.
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You evil, capitalist slime!! ;)

Yep. Developing and releasing stuff costs money. If they want to charge for the convenience of downloading a package, that's their perogative. . . "It's a privilage of rank." "I'll be you stay up late nights just polishing it, huh." "No, I have Majors that do that for me." :p

We pay extra for purposes of convenience all the time. Ever go to a 7-11, a circleK, etc.?
 
How much does duplication&mailing of a CD cost, though? Since they're not charging directly for XBox Live users...
 
Penta2 said:
How much does duplication&mailing of a CD cost, though? Since they're not charging directly for XBox Live users...
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Depends. If you have thousands of customers, then you can buy the equipment and duplicate CDs for ~$0.50 a piece. If you're duplicating CDs on demand using a third party service, they cost about $7.00 a piece. Packaging can add a great deal of expense to these costs. i.e. A paper slip is cheap, a DVD case a bit more expensive, and an actual retail box is (relatively speaking) a fortune.
 
Not to mention the development time that has gone into making these maps and balancing them and fixing cheating glitches in Halo 2.
 
That's got a lot to do with it. They've reiterated that these are not maps that were "held back" prior to release so they could be sold later (Return to Castle Wolfenstein had "downloadable content" that was actually just unlocking hidden content on the disc). All were developed after the launch with a greater understanding of the game's dynamics and player reactions in mind, some nicer graphical touches were incorporated, etc.
 
Did anyone else pick it up last week? They refreshed the matchmaking playlists yesterday so the four free maps are in regular matches and there's previews of the five premium maps now. So far they're mostly pretty neat.
 
Yep, I really liked that big map with the train on it. (Can't think of the name now). that was a blast. I bet it'd be a great big team battle map.
 
My neighbor picked it up. I don't have an Xbox, but boy are they fun so far. We accidentally blew up the turret in that train map with a wraith once, and it ended up we could still use it. So, we were having a blast shooting eachother with an invisible turret on a broken stand. :P It ended up disappearing though, just like broken turrets do, so that it could respawn. We tried again, but couldn't get it back. Ah well, new maps usually have little glitches, it was probably a collision box thing.
 
There's an autoupdate due in a week or two to fix a couple minor things like that (the map is called Terminal). There's also a way to trigger the teleporter on Relic without flipping the switch. Striker, ace, Blonde and I got pinned down really bad on Relic last night. We were in the lead and beating this high level team, and then they got all the sniper and battle rifles and camped out in the sniper's nest. It was quite an ordeal to get them out of there.
 
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