I wasn't aware of the rift Bungie cause with Halo 3—a game which they changed in quite drastic ways with Halo Reach, causing similar uproar (which now 343 Studios, the company now taking on the Halo mantle, is half-reverting with an upcoming update to Halo Reach).
The big question is, of course—are people willing to pay FULL_GAME_PRICE for small updates, like you describe?
MW3 has garnered quite a lot of flack for being entirely derivative and little more than an iterative annual EA sports title-style update.
You're right in that Halo 3 still managed to achieve mainstream success (it sold nearly twice as many copies as its predecessor), but sales are a lagging indicator of support and H3 was released to a very fertile market; the console wars were in full effect and GOW, a non fps, was the 360's only big hitter.
As for your question, this type of thing is far more suited for incremental updates a la modern MMOs. Make the game free on psn/marketplace and charge a cheap annual subscription fee with trials to hook casual users in and you a have a recipe for success. Place a huge emphasis on community and competition so that hardcore players become heavily invested (from all ends of the personality spectrum), be an extremely active presence on your (robust) online community and listen to fans who understand your game. A fact that I think is lost on many developers is that, while catering to the casual crowd over the competitive seems like it should be better business, what casual players put in their disk tray day after day is largely dictated by what they see when they check out their friends list, and if a hardcore player spends eight hours a day online, guess what's going to quickly become every casual player's go to game?
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I wasn't aware of the rift Bungie cause with Halo 3—a game which they changed in quite drastic ways with Halo Reach, causing similar uproar (which now 343 Studios, the company now taking on the Halo mantle, is half-reverting with an upcoming update to Halo Reach).
The big question is, of course—are people willing to pay FULL_GAME_PRICE for small updates, like you describe?
MW3 has garnered quite a lot of flack for being entirely derivative and little more than an iterative annual EA sports title-style update.
You're right in that Halo 3 still managed to achieve mainstream success (it sold nearly twice as many copies as its predecessor), but sales are a lagging indicator of support and H3 was released to a very fertile market; the console wars were in full effect and GOW, a non fps, was the 360's only big hitter.
As for your question, this type of thing is far more suited for incremental updates a la modern MMOs. Make the game free on psn/marketplace and charge a cheap annual subscription fee with trials to hook casual users in and you a have a recipe for success. Place a huge emphasis on community and competition so that hardcore players become heavily invested (from all ends of the personality spectrum), be an extremely active presence on your (robust) online community and listen to fans who understand your game. A fact that I think is lost on many developers is that, while catering to the casual crowd over the competitive seems like it should be better business, what casual players put in their disk tray day after day is largely dictated by what they see when they check out their friends list, and if a hardcore player spends eight hours a day online, guess what's going to quickly become every casual player's go to game?