Halo‘s a name that’s pretty much been around for as long as Microsoft have been in the home console gaming space. The very first entry, titled Halo: Combat Evolved, set the holy trinity of guns, grenades, and melee like a totem pole smack dab in the middle of gaming’s zeitgeist. Halo 2 cemented the future of online console gaming as it arrived on Xbox Live. Halo 3 pulled that onto the Xbox 360, along with the arrival of Master Chief’s helmet-covered face to the world of HD. Halo 4 waved in a new caretaker in the form of 343 Industries and Halo Online, well that’s happening.
But only if you’re in Russia.
Throughout Halo‘s lifespan of almost 14 years, there have been more than a handful of leaps into unknown spaces. During Bungie’s tenure they branched out into different narratives that took a step away from the series’ figurehead. There was even the arrival of a streamlined RTS on Xbox 360 that wasn’t half bad. The latest leap for Halo isn’t coming from a change of genre though. Oh no, it’s going to be a whole different ballgame. 343 Industries and Saber Interactive are teaming up with Russian publisher Innova Systems to put Halo Online into the hands of players.
Halo Online, which is about as imaginative a name as Kate Upton’s latest advertising bunny Game of War, is currently lumbering around Russian systems in closed beta. It doesn’t sound all bad really. The game is going to be a free to play PC only shooter, that sort of seems to be working recently. Planetside 2‘s still a thing and Crytek have seen some success in that part of the world with their shooter Warface. The use of microtransactions in Halo Online doesn’t necessarily bode well but with the prices players would be expected to pay still up in the air, any comment on this would be a little dim-witted.
Speaking of dim-witted, what seems to be utterly mesmerizing is how there are at this time no plans for the game to come to Europe or even North America. One of the biggest franchises out there in the wilds right now, and perhaps the most accessible version of the game will be locked into one country. At a glance, that’s like bringing out an Apple Watch and only making it work for left-handed users. Yeah it’s great for those who can use it, but those who cannot are filled with a sense that they’ve been jilted over something that isn’t realistically under their control.
Free to play shooters are springing up quite frequently out there in the wilds. Hell free to play games like Clash of Clans and Hearthstone often bring in more money than their retail brethren simply because more people can get a taste of the action. This is often due to what the marketing world calls “whales”. These are people who will spend many times what most people would to progress in the game, often thanks in part to a wealthy background or other circumstances. They pay over the average for their content while still enjoying the experience.
There’s a whole host of theory and economic analysis that could be done on this subject but it all boils down to a small collection of factors that make for big money. Not everyone can afford to pay $60 to play a game. Most people however can afford $5 to have a little fun. We as a species are often hesitant to part with larger denominations of wealth. Smaller things however we’re happy to buy on a whim. It’s why gum is sold at the counter rather than out in an aisle. Ten smaller payments of $5 still adds up to $50 over time, we just don’t often notice that money leaving our pockets because it’s what many would characterize as pocket change.
This monetization system could be one of the driving reasons behind Halo Online being a free to play title. That’s not to say it’s the reason the game is only coming out in Russia though. For that, we’re going to have to dig a little deeper. Maybe put on a tinfoil hat too. Better to be safe than sorry.
As one culture grows, it seeps into other media. On a personal note here, I’m a British citizen. I drink more tea than an average American automobile burns in gasoline. Whenever someone raises a Union Jack my right hand starts to lift slowly towards my brow in a salute. My teeth are also pretty bad, but that’s just a bad stereotype. Whenever I stick on the TV or jump onto YouTube, my senses are assaulted in a shock and awe campaign that rivals the alien attack of Independence Day. We don’t talk about British shows around the water cooler. We drink at Starbucks while talking about the latest episode of The Walking Dead or American politics.
Cultural influences flow through the power of media. That’s why so many people know about Halo. If you were to mention Forza or inFamous to a gaggle of people in my local area and ask if they knew what it was, an approving nod or two might appear in the back corner of the room. Mention Halo, and everyone knows that its a video game. They don’t necessarily know what happens or who that strange green dude is, but they know it’s a game. Innova Systems may have already had a game in the pipeline that was a free to play first person shooter. By bringing the Halo name to it, they stand to make a quick buck from the simple power of name recognition.
There’s also the question of infrastructure. In countries that could have once been described as being behind the Iron Curtain, western games consoles are not particularly easy to come by. Their prices turn them into high value luxury items which are thrust into the stratosphere by often-insane import taxes. The components to build even a semi-respectable computer though are easy to find. Thanks to their availability, PC markets in countries like Russia are much larger in relation to consoles than in western markets.
So that’s quite possibly why the game is coming to PC, why it bears the Halo name, and part of why it’s probably a free to play title. There is, however, a slightly darker vein that may run through the body of Halo Online. It isn’t free to play because it’s the most profitable monetization method in the Russian market; it’s free to play because it’s the only way to make money.
Piracy is rampant in the Russian games market. That’s not simply an assumption, it’s a fact. In 2011, a worldwide software association named the BSA investigated software piracy rates worldwide. Their figures only accounted for unlicensed software in the workplace it isn’t exactly a huge leap to assume that this is also occurring in the games market. They found that 63% of all software used in Russia’s workplaces was unlicensed, with 72% of those surveyed admitting that they used pirated software. At the time, that equated to over $3 billion of lost revenue for software companies.
Bringing this back to the world of gaming, that’s a pretty unsafe market to be throwing your expensive game into. By using a free to play monetization system, the studios working with Halo Online would be almost guaranteed any incoming revenue because microtransactions cannot be pirated. Those that are not willing to pony up the cash can still enjoy the game too, both shoring up the user numbers to keep paying customers interested while increasing the visibility of the game on social media. Increased visibility means more people intrigued. More people intrigued increased the likelihood of “landing a whale” and getting some income going through.
Still don’t think that makes sense? Well lets try to explain this with maths (yes I say maths because I’m British, God save the Queen and tally-ho and all that stereotypical nonsense). If you charged people $20 for your game in Russia, there’s every possibility that two thirds of people (that’s pretty much 67%) would get to play the game without paying for it. That’s only $20 in your pockets when you should have got $60. Make it a free to play game and ask people to pay $5 for a new helmet or experience boost and you’ve got the possibility of getting $15 from three people.
Yeah that’s $5 less than if you didn’t offer a free to play experience, but those who pay once are likely to pay again. All you need is one of them to buy a new helmet and an experience boost, then you’ll be breaking even. This isn’t saying that we approve of over the top and crazy microtransactional practices like pay to win, it’s just explaining how painful piracy could be.
Remember where we said you should get a tinfoil hat ready? Well now’s the time to put it on because we’re going into full on conspiracy mode.
With all of these reasons, Halo Online‘s release as a Russian exclusive free to play first person shooter that’s only available on PC sort of makes sense. What if that’s not the main reason it’s only available in Russia though. There are other games, like the aforementioned Warface or Survivarium that recently entered Steam’s Early Access program, which are available globally, not just in Russia. What could have possessed the minds at 343 Industries, Innova Systems, and Microsoft itself to only release this game in one region.
We all know that Halo 5: Guardians is coming to Xbox One later this year, October 27 to be precise. Many people are going to be buying that game just to leap headlong into the multiplayer component. Having Halo Online available in the wider PC space would pull people away from buying Halo 5 if they also owned a PC. We’re assuming that they’ll both be as good as each other here. They probably won’t but still, keep that hat on. It’s not outside the realms of reason to consider that maybe, just maybe, Microsoft want to keep Halo Online in Russia because they would like players in Europe and North America to pay $60 for Halo, alongside paying for an Xbox One.
See, this is what happens when you start thinking about something and don’t stop at a reasonable point. With all that being said though, there’s nothing necessarily stopping those involved in producing Halo Online from releasing it onto PC’s worldwide at some point in the near future. The product that’s currently available is a closed beta. They may be testing the waters in Russia before going global with Halo Online.
Global arrival of Halo Online may have actually been planned, only for the powers that be to pull it back after the recent financial crisis in Russia. During the latter half of 2014, the Russian Ruble’s value plummeted. Likely due in part to the sanctions imposed upon Russia due to events in Crimea and the falling price of oil, this caused the local currency to fall sharply. Without going into all the economic chatter we’ll just say this.
A low currency value meant that games were much cheaper in Russia. This is part of why games suddenly started being sold digitally in Russia only, as they may only cost $20 where the North American version cost $60. A company that sells to both markets doesn’t want that kind of saving to be possible, so by separating the products they saved themselves serious losses. This could have influenced the choice to make Halo Online a Russia-only release, as bringing it out worldwide would put players in the west at a disadvantage simply due to the value of in-game goods.
What the future is for Halo Online we may not know until it is thrust upon us. Whether it’ll be a pay to win experience that favors the rich to the skilled or a completely fair arena where you pay for cosmetic upgrades is still yet to be finalized. Whether it’ll actually be any good is still a complete mystery. All that we know right now is that Halo Online is coming to Russian PCs soon, and some of us out here in the Western market think that we’d like a piece of the action too.
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