Halo Infinite shipped free multiplayer and charged money for the color blue
Halo Infinite multiplayer launch monetization forced two progression fixes in two weeks
The market's verdict: +0.9% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
Halo Infinite's free multiplayer arrived three weeks early on November 15, 2021 as an Xbox 20th anniversary surprise, and the surprise was the store: armor colors, the thing Halo players had customized freely for two decades, were sold for real money, and progression ran on challenge-grind XP so punishing that 343 patched it on November 18 and again on November 30. By January the studio admitted the shop was "not delivering on value, quality, or price" and cut prices. By April 2022 the Steam player count had fallen below the 2014 Master Chief Collection's. The biggest FPS launch of the year, monetized like a phone game, and the players treated it accordingly.
This one is well documented.
They did it more than once
Charged for fake money in 2005, charged for the color blue in 2021. The store remembers.
Links
↳ caused by Halo Infinite multiplayer surprise launch (November 2021)
Timeline
- Nov 15, 2021 Confirmed First reports came in.
- Jan 31, 2022 Mitigated 343 admitted pricing missed and cut store prices.