There was a lot of hype around this game, so I thought I should finally install it on my new Lumia 925 windows phone. Seriously blows my mind they are charging $7 for a phone game that is pretty much just on-par with free or very cheap phone games in the same class, and on top of that have the gall to include microtransactions inside.
I mean, ZombieHQ (link) is basically the same exact game, same exact level of visual fidelity, but involves zombies and not halo and is completely free (with optional micro transactions).
Now I don’t like ZombieHQ (is it possible for people to release a zombie game that doesn’t go with the terrible "Lol its like a zombie movie from the 70’s!!" goofy design style, that nobody actually likes or thinks looks good?), but a big $7 price difference on top of still being encouraged to do microtransactions is slimy enough that the halo branding can’t save it.
It just makes me think that MS’s game division is so disconnected with the current market forces that they think their game brands can keep them afloat alone. I don’t know about MS but Halo’s fad status died in 2007-2008 in favor of Call of Duty. Halo is still a good series, with a good brand but its officially large-cult-status in popularity now and not something that people at large are willing to bend over backward for anymore. It doesn’t help that with the whole Xbox One debacle that they were pretty much proving that they think they can ride on the success of their previous console/branding to push stupid anti-consumer policies onto us, when the reality is that type of thinking is exactly why the PS3 (and all of its game brands) were not a big hit at all when that console and all the brands that went with it first launched. Now to give credit they’ve reversed a lot of the bad policies that surrounded the xbox one, but it can’t reverse the feeling that the xbox division just doesn’t really have a clue and that they are focus testing very poorly.
Due to Microsoft negligence, its OEMs are suffering, especially Nokia. Here is a list of problems people have with them.
Announce Surface. Fail to capitalize on the excitement by releasing the product 4 months or so later. Fail to include features like separate DPI scaling, which is a joke for the Surface Pro.
Take ages in releasing WP8. Take even longer in pushing out WP 7.8. Leave Nokia to complete functionality with Nokia’s apps.
I get that Windows Phone is new(ish) but there are extremely basic features that are missing. Such as:
Creating a playlist on the fly
Text Wrapping in Internet Explorer.
Orientation lock.
Call/Text blocking. Samsung and Nokia had to bring that basic feature to WP
Not promoting WP enough. They should be doing a lot more if they ever want WP to compete with Android/iOS. The next version of WP is ages away.
Now they are charging their own customers ridiculous prices for their own Games.