Bungie Discusses Halo 3: ODST’s "Series" of Marketing Stumbles

December 9, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Wii News

With an oddly postponed E3 reveal, a post-reveal name-change, and some confusion following Bungie initially classifying the game as an “expansion pack,” it’s clear Halo 3: ODST didn’t have the kind of clockwork-smooth PR out of the gate that you’d expect for an entry in Microsoft’s most important franchise. In fact, if Bungie had it to do over again, they would.

“I’m no PR expert, but it’s pretty obvious the game had a series of stumbles; from the naming, to the initial E3 2008 countdown reveal failure, and finally pricing,” said design lead Lars Bakken in an interview with G4. “It would definitely be nice to have a do-over for the game introduction.”

One of the biggest problems in marketing ODST was communicating exactly what it was, as it turned out not to be a full-fledged sequel nor an expansion pack. “We got criticized, fairly, for doing a poor job communicating what ODST was, an expansion pack or a full-fledged, AAA release,” said Joseph Staten, writer and creative director, talking about reviews the game received. “It definitely turned out to be the latter. But, unfortunately, we didn?t know how much great work we were going to pull-off when we first announced the game. It’s impossible to know, but my gut says that if we’d never said the words ‘expansion pack’ we would have seen an appreciable increase in the review scores.”

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