Microsoft finally announced Halo Infinite’s release date–December 8, 2021–as part of Geoff Keighley’s Gamescom Opening Night Live event on Wednesday. The date is later in the year than many might have expected or hoped for. In fact, it’s the latest date in the year ever for a new Halo game, with Halo: Combat Evolved (November 15, 2001) previously holding that designation.
For comparison, Halo: Combat Evolved launched in November 2001, Halo 2 debuted in November 2004, Halo 3 came out in September 2007, and Halo 4 launched in November 2008. Halo 5, which is the latest entry in the mainline series, premiered in October 2015.
According to Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis, Microsoft’s decision to release Halo Infinite in December might come down to the company choosing to compromise. After a year-long delay from its original 2020 release date, delaying the game again might have been too costly a decision (although Joseph Staten did recently acknowledge Microsoft considered this). Putting the game out in December might be later than some fans might want, but it allows 343 to stick to its 2021 promise and give the team the time it needs to polish the game.
“The release date appears to me to be a compromise between making it available in 2021 as promised but also giving the studio the most amount of time to deliver polish to the game before the release,” he said.
In terms of the commercial impact of launching after the Black Friday shopping season, Harding-Rolls doesn’t believe this is very significant or noteworthy.
“I don’t think it makes a huge amount of commercial difference between launching mid-November and the beginning of December. The Black Friday issue is less relevant this year because Xbox Series consoles will likely be supply constrained. Also, consumers in the market for an Xbox Series console and Halo will know it’s arriving in a few days and will be happy to wait if they pick up a console during Black Friday.”
Another element at play in the Halo Infinite release date situation is that the gaming market overall has developed and changed in a significant way since Halo 5 came out in 2015. That’s due in part to the growth of Xbox Game Pass, which I have previously argued is Microsoft’s secret weapon in the current console climate. In a big shift for the series, Microsoft is making Halo Infinite (and all of its first-party games) available on Game Pass at no extra cost. Not only that, but Halo Infinite is a unique release in the series because its campaign and multiplayer are separate products, with multiplayer being completely free-to-play.
Thanks to Game Pass and free-to-play, which reduces cost friction and opens up the potential audience for Halo Infinite to anyone with a Game Pass membership, Harding-Rolls believes Halo Infinite could enjoy the biggest-ever day-one player audience for the franchise.
“Halo Infinite is entering a market which has developed a lot since the last major release in the franchise in 2015. Microsoft has taken a dramatically different product strategy route since then with Xbox Game Pass and day one inclusion of first-party releases,” Harding-Rolls said. “I expect the day one audience for the new title to be franchise beating as a result and with in-game monetisation taking a more important role.”
Mat Piscatella, an analyst at NPD, said it’s understandable that people want to compare release dates and sales volumes for past Halo games in the context of Halo Infinite, but the game has changed.
“When it comes to the Halo Infinite offering, it doesn’t make a ton of sense,” he said. “The franchise is moving from a premium upfront paywall offering to a multi-pronged release with a free-to-play multiplayer component, the premium campaign offering, and of course … campaign will also be available via Game Pass.”
Another way in which the business has changed for Microsoft is that previous Halo games were important catalysts to help move Xbox hardware. But with Microsoft no longer really caring if you buy an Xbox or not, this has changed. Now, the business is all about active users and engagement, and Xbox is now on PC, mobile, and the cloud, and not strictly tied to any one piece of hardware.
“Whereas previous Halo offerings had to also moonlight as an immediate sales driver of console hardware, the current Xbox ecosystem (which of course extends beyond the Xbox consoles to PC and other internet connected screens via Xbox Cloud) doesn’t require Halo to sell millions of consoles on its own in the first holiday,” Piscatella said. “It’s about engagement over time, not a short-term sales boost, and I believe this key differentiator goes as far as anything in explaining why the Halo Infinite offering is what it is.”
Regarding Halo Infinite’s multiplayer adopting a free-to-play approach, Harding-Rolls said this is a “sensible move” for the franchise that reflects the current state of gaming across PC and console. Indeed, some of the biggest and most popular games on the market, in the shooter category and others, are free-to-play. As I argued previously, Halo Infinite going free-to-play is the smartest move Microsoft could make to grow the appeal of Halo with a wider audience.
Harding-Rolls said another benefit of going free-to-play for Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is that it creates a funnel effect that has the opportunity to bring more people into the Halo fold. And it’s not hard to see why. Whereas all previous Halo games locked multiplayer behind the paywall of buying the game outright, Halo Infinite allows anyone with an Xbox or PC to jump in. And thanks to Microsoft’s recent changes to Xbox Live Gold, multiplayer is actually completely free.
“Microsoft needs to embrace free-to-play to be competitive. Free multiplayer also acts as a funnel to bring in more players to the franchise and is an important building block for Microsoft’s overall ongoing engagement, sales of Xbox hardware, and acquiring new Game Pass subscribers,” Harding-Rolls said.
“Microsoft needs to embrace free-to-play to be competitive.” — Piers Harding-Rolls
As Piscatella sees is, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is the most important element of Halo Infinite as it relates to measuring its ultimate success. “And as we’ve seen with other free-to-play multiplayer offerings in recent years, what happens at launch doesn’t always correlate to what happens over time. In addition, those free-to-play multiplayer games that do find success can make that success extend over many years,” he said. “So when it comes to release timing, the exclusion of the co-op and Forge modes at launch, and any other particulars for this December in particular… I don’t think much of it may end up mattering in the long run.”
“What will really matter when it comes to Halo Infinite is how the free-to-play multiplayer component is received, and if it can grow an engaged player base over time. The benchmarks for Halo Infinite aren’t going to be Halo 2 or Halo 3. Instead, the benchmarks will be the games that tend to lead in viewership on Twitch.”
Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities tells GameSpot that he expects Halo Infinite to sell around 3 million units outright, with the rest of the player base for the campaign mode coming in through Game Pass. Microsoft’s stated strategy is to grow Xbox Game Pass, and taking a hit on hard sales to push Game Pass–which offers the type of recurring revenue that the company wants to see–is a tradeoff that Microsoft is OK with. Pachter estimates that Halo Infinite launching on Game Pass will lead to “a few million” new sign-ups for the service.
“There will be 22 million or so Game Pass subscribers to play it. A normal Halo sells 7 – 8 million units, this one will sell 3 million, because over half of the people who would have bought it are now getting it for free,” Pachter said. “Including it in Game Pass will drive a few million new subscribers. That’s their goal, so the strategy is fine.”
Halo Infinite’s release in December marks just the first stage of the game’s lifecycle. More than any previous entry in the series, Halo Infinite is leaning into games-as-a-service across both campaign and multiplayer. When Halo Infinite launches on December 8, it won’t have Forge or campaign co-op, two fan-favorite, beloved features of the franchise, but they will come to the game months later in future seasonal updates. And this is another element of Halo Infinite that is unique from past entries in the series, making comparisons to earlier games not as useful as in the past. Halo Infinite doesn’t necessarily need to rely so heavily on day-one sales because it is a live-service product that will grow and evolve over time, bringing in new players regularly (or at least that’s the idea). You can bet Halo Infinite’s campaign and multiplayer will become a major selling point for Game Pass. And as mentioned, driving subscriptions is Microsoft’s true end game–and it won’t stop on December 8.
Pachter also addressed the competitive landscape this holiday season, saying Battlefield 2042’s release in October might negatively impact Halo Infinite’s sales by taking away “a few hundred thousand units” from Halo. Call of Duty is also often seen as a competitor to Halo in the FPS space, and its newest release, the WWII-set Vanguard, launches on November 5. With Halo Infinite releasing more than a month after those games, and the presumed juggernaut that will be GTA 5 for PS5 and Xbox Series X on November 11, Microsoft’s game has some extra space to itself. For comparison, previous Halo games like Halo 5 and Halo 4 released within a week of the newest Call of Duty launches. This time, it has much more breathing room.
Despite the delay of key features like Forge and split-screen co-op, Halo Infinite is expected to be a big success this holiday and a key growth vector for Xbox Game Pass. Launching in December as opposed to Halo’s historical windows in October or November isn’t going to derail the game’s momentum or hype.
Source: Gamespot
