Halo Anniversary Maps Coming To Reach

[Earnest Cavalli]

Halo Anniversary Maps Coming To Reach

Multiplayer gamers now have one less reason to buy Halo: CE Anniversary.

Microsoft has announced that the multiplayer maps due to ship with next week's Halo: CE Anniversary (a high-def remake of the original Halo) will also be released as DLC for 2010's Halo: Reach.

Kotaku reports:

The "Anniversary Map Pack" will include six multiplayer stages-Battle Canyon, Breakneck, High Noon, Penance, Ridgeline and Solitary-plus Installation 04, as a Firefight map, for 1200 Microsoft Points ($15). It will be available Nov. 15, with the release of Halo: Anniversary.

Good news for Reach owners who weren't keen on the idea of shelling out $40 for Anniversary, I suppose, but does this strike anyone else as a bewilderingly generous move on Microsoft's part?

It seems to me that either the company is super confident that Anniversary can sell purely based on gamers' collective nostalgia for the original Halo's singleplayer game, or is hedging its bets by cannibalizing Anniversary's multiplayer content as Reach DLC in an effort to recoup development costs.

Granted, we don't have exact details on how the DLC versions of these maps might differ from their disc-based counterparts, and for all I know this might just be a clever way to ensure that the two games' multiplayer communities can interact with one another (thus creating one giant "supercommunity"), but either way this is a confusing move.

I guess we won't truly know how this situation works out until November 15. In the mean time, what do you think? Have any of you just lost interest in buying Anniversary? Do the multiplayer maps matter to you? How many of you are just in it for that insanely overpowered pistol?

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5858547/halo-reach-picks-up-anniversarys-maps-next-week]

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[Terminate421]

Sweet, are they remakes of old maps or new ones?

If old: Cool

If new: Even cooler

Also, in before Halo haters......

EDIT: I should also mention that I will get anniversary edition once the price drops.

 

[Lunar Templar]

some one get the guns away from Microsoft, since they seem intent on shooting them selves in the foot with this

 

[Covarr]

I'd rather a proper Blood Gulch remake, something a bit more faithful than Hemorrhage. But maybe that's just me, I dunno.

P.S. Thanks

 

[vrbtny]

Wait.... Microsoft are doing something which isn't driven entirely by their soulless overlords who care about nothing but there project margins?

wow, i've you that image twice in as many minutes.... crazy day

 

[IndianaJonny]

Looking forward to Anniversary for the co-op multiplayer, not the versus, so no big deal.

 

[Smooth Operator]

some one get the guns away from Microsoft, since they seem intent on shooting them selves in the foot with this

Are you kidding Halo fans will buy the DLC now and then Anniversary anyway, MS knows there is no limit to this cash fountain so they just upped their profits some more.

 

[Lunar Templar]

some one get the guns away from Microsoft, since they seem intent on shooting them selves in the foot with this

Are you kidding Halo fans will buy the DLC now and then Anniversary anyway, MS knows there is no limit to this cash fountain so they just upped their profits some more.

that thought did cross my mind :/ but i was being hopeful they'd be smarter then that, granted, i know better, but yeah ...

 

[lazyslothboy]

If my memory serves, I am pretty sure these maps are just on both the anniversary disk as well as alternately as dlc. There was an article somewhere that said that there was a download code in anniversary so you could load the maps off of your halo reach disk too.

 

[PsiMatrix]

As I posted in the FB comment: it's highly likely, since 343 have been blabbing about it via Reach, that the versus multiplayer will be a standalone edition of the Reach multiplayer just like ODST had Halo 3 multiplayer disc which had both mythic map packs while Halo 3-only owners had to buy each pack.

Good way to keep the current Reach multiplayer going by adding it to newer releases. And my Anniversary edition is already on its way.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

*raises hand for overpowered pistol*

I'm a Halo fan, OK? I mean, I know that I already own CE, but I'm gonna get it because it's CE HD and because I love Halo. The only way they could get me to stop playing Halo is if they screwed over Halo 4 so bad (which is probably possible).

Yes, I know I'm a contributing factor to the stagnation of the FPS market and lack of innovation. Shut up and let me have my guilty pleasure. >.<

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

I never actually played Halo CE multiplayer. If I get Anniversary, it'll be because when I first played Halo, I was sad because it was such a good game, but it was getting a little hard to look at sometimes.
Which reminds me, I really hope they fix the vehicles. I want to be able to jump onto tanks and splatter people with the ghost. But that'll probably never happen. Curse a lack of innovation due to nonstalgia!

 

[walrusaurus]

My sense is that it's exactly the opposite. They don't think that they're going to get Reach players to buy the remake, so they're trying to compensate for that. I won't be buying it because the HD part is just running on the Reach engine, so i might as well actually play Reach. I probably won't buy that map pack either, 15 bucks is real steep for 4 maps.

 

[walrusaurus]

I never actually played Halo CE multiplayer. If I get Anniversary, it'll be because when I first played Halo, I was sad because it was such a good game, but it was getting a little hard to look at sometimes.

Well from my understanding the mp for the anniversary edition isn't going to be the same as it was in CE. They're using the reach engine, but disabling armor abilities and changing the player physics a little bit, but my impression is that the old health and shield system won't be patched over. Plus it'll all just be pistol spam anyways.

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

Did you... did you say Battle Canyon? On the Reach engine?

ALL OF MY MONEY

 

[the.gill123]

I saw this game last Wednesday in the stock room at work, I tell you what, I have never been so tempted to steal as much as that moment when I clocked the game. The thing is, I don't even want it, but my mate is a massive Halo fan and he would have been so jealous, but then that urge almost exploded into an actual theft, when I saw Skyrim just sat on shelf.

That's the worst thing working in Argos, not the occasional bad customer, not the snide comments when an order is a bit late, but seeing games, days, and in Halos case, weeks before release, and there's nothing I can do about it.

 

[repeating integers]

My sense is that it's exactly the opposite. They don't think that they're going to get Reach players to buy the remake, so they're trying to compensate for that. I won't be buying it because the HD part is just running on the Reach engine, so i might as well actually play Reach. I probably won't buy that map pack either, 15 bucks is real steep for 4 maps.

7, actually, including the Firefight one.

And yes, I too am surprised by this move. Microsoft? Being nice? Surely you jest.