Halo Infinite can’t succeed unless it fixes its messy free-to-play approach

A free-to-play experiment gone wrong

Halo Infinite hasn’t even formally launched, and yet studio 343 Industries has found itself at the center of a heated debate about how modern video games earn money and reward players for their time and attention.

Halo Infinite is straddling an unprecedented line. Because Microsoft launched the free-to-play multiplayer half of Halo Infinite earlier this month in a beta state, that gave 343 a bit of leeway to present its first pass at monetization as an experimental work in progress. And it’s in dire need of some significant changes.

• Players immediately voiced concern over cosmetics pricing and the grueling grind of the game’s first battle pass. 343 acted quickly to address the battle pass, but its first timed event launched last week and introduced even more problems, including issues with mixing and matching armor pieces and challenges that run counter to its objective-based game modes.
• Design lead Jerry Hook said on Monday : "Yes I am still playing Halo and feeling everyone’s pain on progression. We are back at it next week and this will be top of my list with the team." Later in the day, community manager John Junyszek announced yet more progression changes designed to make the game feel more rewarding.
  
• 343 is trying to do many things at once by pleasing fans of classic Halo games first and foremost, but then also modernizing the game’s systems to keep it competitive with Fortnite and Call of Duty while creating a path for the game to earn back its budget and become a revenue driver for Xbox Game Studios.

The debate at its heart is about Halo Infinite’s business model. Halo as most people know it is a game you bought back in the day on a disc for $60, and then perhaps you shelled out for some extra multiplayer map packs. But even the newer Halos never fully adapted to the modern, free-to-play world most shooters now operate in, making Infinite a product that’s trying to be both modern and nostalgia-inducing at the same time.

• Microsoft has made clear it’s not really interested in a big sales milestone like Sony’s first-party games or big franchises from Activision Blizzard, Take-Two or Ubisoft. It is effectively devaluing the sales of Halo Infinite by releasing it day one on Xbox Game Pass and also making its stickiest component free to play.
• Instead, Halo is supposed to make money through its battle pass and through cosmetic upgrades like character and weapon skins and other add-ons. The game will still retail for $60 if you want to play the campaign, but that campaign will be available to anyone who pays $10 for one month of Xbox Game Pass.
• To successfully monetize Halo Infinite, and not simply treat it as a loss leader to boost the Xbox brand, Microsoft and 343 need an extremely fine-tuned model that can rival Fortnite for rewarding players of all skill levels and incentivizing them to log in almost every day. What they have right now is a far cry from that.

Halo Infinite has an incredible foundation. All the pieces are there, and Microsoft’s decision to delay the game a year has proved a smart move as the fundamental components — how the game feels and plays, and its fun factor — are off the charts. What Microsoft and 343 need to do now is just tune the game’s reward mechanisms to keep them in line and competitive with modern free-to-play giants.

• The Washington Post’s Gene Park argued an excellent point that Halo Infinite’s monetization controversy underscores a generational divide in gaming between players who grew up with Halo and those born into the free-to-play, cosmetics-driven world.
• That’s an astute observation. Many modern multiplayer gamers care more about how a game rewards them and lets them express themselves than focusing on a narrow set of specific skills that will help them best opponents and win a game.
• The largest free-to-play games in the world are all successful because they reward players for their time in a way that feels fair and doesn’t punish them for, say, being bad at the game. That in turn makes players more likely to spend money, and much more than a standard $60 price tag, but only if they feel like they’re not being fleeced.
• The biggest inspiration for 343 right now should be Fortnite, which to this day remains the most savvy free-to-play operator in the industry with its well-priced cosmetics, excellent collaborations and events, and its gold standard battle pass design.

If you, like me, are a classic Halo player who doesn’t put as much stock in cosmetics or reward mechanisms, you’re probably having a grand time with Infinite. It feels great, it plays great and it’s a ton of fun. We also got an early glimpse last week at a promising esports scene that could, in a best-case scenario, catapult the game back to the competitive heights it enjoyed during the heyday of Xbox 360-era console shooters.

But the game’s longer-term shelf life will depend on whether 343 can adjust to the community’s feedback and implement free-to-play tweaks that make this Halo feel like it's worth much more than the $60 we would have paid for it a decade ago.

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