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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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?