More than 2.7 million gamers signed up for and played the Halo: Reach beta that finished last week, and Bungie announced today that the game would be released on September 14 worldwide (with the exception of Japan, which will see a September 15 release date).
The release date jumps the gun on the slew of Holiday titles that arrive each year in time for gift-giving and high sales numbers. It’s an interesting strategy by Bungie, but one that may pay off in terms of bucking the crowded AAA season.
To say that Halo: Reach‘s beta was a success is probably an understatement. According to Bungie, players logged more than 16 million hours of play and 1.1 billion virtual kills over the 18-day beta period.
Speaking of the beta, Bungie Studios community director Brian Jarrard said, “It’s exceeded our expectations. Our only real perspective going into this was the ‘Halo 3‘ beta test, which had about 800,000 people. We knew there were a couple million copies of ‘ODST‘ out there, but we really didn’t have any specific information that let us know what the population might be like.”
What’s interesting, and fantastic, is how early this beta was implemented, and how much Bungie should be able to derive from the beta results. A sampling size of 2.7 million players, 1.1 billion kills and 16 million hours should show glitches, bugs and other exploits that the team can fix. In addition, it will provide them with insights into whether certain weapons are too powerful or too weak, whether any are being underused, and whether certain game modes are more popular than others.
“There really is tons of analytical data that we need to derive from the beta test with regard to the network and back-end systems,” said Halo: Reach Creative Director Marcus Lehto. “We needed our fans to provide feedback. We needed a very large audience to hammer on this game, which allows us to use the data that really helps shape the final product.”
The dedication to an early beta that provides several months to iron-out issues is a strong indicator that Bungie is once again prepping a masterful first-person shooter. The Halo series is one of the best-selling series of all time, and Bungie realizes that they need to change things up, introduce new elements and make a better Halo game than ever before in order to avoid “Halo fatigue.”
“This is the most pressure we’ve ever been under,” said Lehto. “This is the biggest ‘Halo‘ title we’ve ever made, and we’re worried there’s ‘Halo‘ fatigue out there. That’s why we set out to add new twists, and we’re happy to see people enjoy it, but it was a huge risk for us to release what’s essentially a work in progress to almost 3 million people.”
Reach‘s release date ensures that the game won’t have a ton of competition from other big releases such as Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Portal 2 and Rock Band 3.
Last year saw a number of AAA titles get pushed into early 2010 due to Modern Warfare 2‘s November release date. Publishers, afraid of losing business due to the sales juggernaut, moved their titles in order to have less competition and hopefully move more units. Halo: Reach‘s early fall release date shouldn’t affect Holiday games. In fact, Halo: Reach should be able to stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of the games released during its time frame and should enjoy a prolonged period at the top of the charts thanks to its early release date.
In years past, Halo: Reach probably would have been a Holiday release, but trends in the video game industry are indicating that highly anticipated games sell well at all times of the year, and so the old industry standard of bringing out all the big guns prior to the Holidays is changing. It’s a welcome reward for gamers who hate having to choose between ten great games during the Holidays, and Halo: Reach should do very well with little competition during its release period.
Expect a sigh of relief, too, from other game publishers as they realize Halo: Reach won’t be competing with their titles as a new release during the Holiday season.
