Dear 343i,
I like many others fully understand the hard decision made to sunset support for the 360 Halo titles after many years of service, your commitment to keeping these titles alive is to be applauded and the full year’s notice given is not only deeply appreciated but should be the gold standard of how to announce such impending events.
However...A key aspect I cannot agree with is the instantaneous delisting of the digital titles from sale without any sort of prior warning, this flies directly in contradiction to the full year’s notice given for the services themselves.
I understand the logic of possibly not to wishing to mislead customers, however the store page for these tiles has already been updated with the following message...
“In approximately ONE YEAR, in December 2021, online services for legacy Halo Xbox 360 titles will be discontinued. Owners of these titles will still be able to play these games indefinitely, however, certain online features and experiences, particularly online matchmaking, will be limited or disabled.”
This is a clear warning, one which is appreciated, but one who’s usefulness is really only for new buyers.
In contrast, fellow Xbox IP Forza always gives prior warning ahead of time for when they’ll delist their games from sale due to licensing, this is helpful as it allows those who for whatever reason never purchased the digital copies to have a deadline and this should have been applied here.
It makes little sense to me why you’d abundantly pull these titles from sale with no warning whatsoever when you’ve given a clear year’s warning for the servers.
You fully admit that many aspects of these games such as campaign will continue to work after this set date without your support, but even if you believe you cannot sell the game after this point, you should have had the very least given the community warning before delisting the tiles so those who wish to have a digital archival version may have it.
I personally have discs for these games, however I have absolutely no idea if the next iteration of the Xbox hardware will support discs or not, so if I had been given warning I would have purchased the digital copies of at least Halo 3 & Reach so I have an archival future version playable for the games I so dearly loved (and yes MCC is awesome, but it’s also not the same as an archive).
I am not asking you to offer the games for nothing, I personally am more than happy to purchase at full price, nor am I even asking for you to keep the game for sale until the point of closure and beyond (although I don’t see any reason why you cannot do that), but for the very least you should make these titles available game for a limited and temporary period of time just so those of us who might now reconsider the need of having a digital copy can do so with the future in mind and with the full understanding and acknowledgement of the server closures.
I do not believe this is an unreasonable request, I am begging you to relist the titles at least temporarily and with full disclosed deadlines, abruptly pulling the titles out of the blue really is not fair.
-jackpipsam
I like many others fully understand the hard decision made to sunset support for the 360 Halo titles after many years of service, your commitment to keeping these titles alive is to be applauded and the full year’s notice given is not only deeply appreciated but should be the gold standard of how to announce such impending events.
However...A key aspect I cannot agree with is the instantaneous delisting of the digital titles from sale without any sort of prior warning, this flies directly in contradiction to the full year’s notice given for the services themselves.
I understand the logic of possibly not to wishing to mislead customers, however the store page for these tiles has already been updated with the following message...
“In approximately ONE YEAR, in December 2021, online services for legacy Halo Xbox 360 titles will be discontinued. Owners of these titles will still be able to play these games indefinitely, however, certain online features and experiences, particularly online matchmaking, will be limited or disabled.”
This is a clear warning, one which is appreciated, but one who’s usefulness is really only for new buyers.
In contrast, fellow Xbox IP Forza always gives prior warning ahead of time for when they’ll delist their games from sale due to licensing, this is helpful as it allows those who for whatever reason never purchased the digital copies to have a deadline and this should have been applied here.
It makes little sense to me why you’d abundantly pull these titles from sale with no warning whatsoever when you’ve given a clear year’s warning for the servers.
You fully admit that many aspects of these games such as campaign will continue to work after this set date without your support, but even if you believe you cannot sell the game after this point, you should have had the very least given the community warning before delisting the tiles so those who wish to have a digital archival version may have it.
I personally have discs for these games, however I have absolutely no idea if the next iteration of the Xbox hardware will support discs or not, so if I had been given warning I would have purchased the digital copies of at least Halo 3 & Reach so I have an archival future version playable for the games I so dearly loved (and yes MCC is awesome, but it’s also not the same as an archive).
I am not asking you to offer the games for nothing, I personally am more than happy to purchase at full price, nor am I even asking for you to keep the game for sale until the point of closure and beyond (although I don’t see any reason why you cannot do that), but for the very least you should make these titles available game for a limited and temporary period of time just so those of us who might now reconsider the need of having a digital copy can do so with the future in mind and with the full understanding and acknowledgement of the server closures.
I do not believe this is an unreasonable request, I am begging you to relist the titles at least temporarily and with full disclosed deadlines, abruptly pulling the titles out of the blue really is not fair.
-jackpipsam
