Halo 3 on PC: is it possible and should we even care?

[LGC Pominator]

Hmm, well sounds to me you just have a weird personal preference. Far be it from me to tell another guy "what feels natural". Whatever floats you're boat, I guess.

Similar with your resolution experience, flitting between an undersized SDTV and HDTV I can see you would get more attached to one and it would be hard to look at each output objectively.

Given the chance I would gladly take up a 60" 1080p OLED Tv with full HD up the behind, however my university student loan will not support that sort of exorbitant spending, nor will my job as a games journalist for alliancegamers.com, so i am stuck with a simple small TV that does its job, I do enjoy seeing my favourite games on big ass TVs though, the experience of MW 2 and Forza 3 for example is greatly improved when you can get the look down to the individual fibres on your characters gloves, and don't get me started on the Gears of War 2 cinematics, I do find however that larger TVs do support higher sensitivities better than smaller TVs, for example i play halo 3 with sensitivity at 8 on my home TV, but on my parents TV i set it to 10...

 

[dududf]

Look at the Halo 2 PC port.

That sucked so much donkey cock, that it's just...Amazing.

I predict samething for Halo 3.

 

[Xanadu84]

It will likely happen, probably in a poor-to-acceptable port. There will be enough PC gamers looking for a distraction, curious about Halo 3, and willing to give it an impulse buy. Id consider it for $20, but its definitely not worth a full price game. It certainly will be one of the less exciting moments in gaming, but a few people will like it, so that's fine. Merits the effort of a port at least. Of course, my reaction to Halo 2 on PC was less anger at insulting PC users, and more of a condescending, "Aww, isn't that adorable...they think they can be a big star on this platform with their older game. He thinks he's big people".

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

Maybe back when it was innovati... wait, that's right, same as the other two, the multiplayer was so aweso..... oh yea, also sucked. It's possible, but personally, I think it's not needed.

 

[stone0042]

I'd like it, but to be honest if it came out on PC I would probably pirate it because I have bought every Halo game, paid for every DLC, and paid for a year and a half of live which I used only for Halo. Yeah, it would still be wrong but I see it as justification. I've given Bungie plenty of my hard-earned cash.

 

[ReepNeep]

Technically it is possible. Although if Microsoft tries to do the same bullshit they did with Halo 2's PC version and made you have to pay a subscription fee to use online features (which I am fairly sure failed...) it probably wouldn't work out too well.

Games for Windows Live stopped being a paid service over a year ago, I believe.

The reason wasn't really arbitrary, just misguided. It looks like they thought they could use Halo 2 to drive sales for Vista because it was such a killer ap on the XBox. On the PC no one gave a flying flippity f-ck about Halo (at least not enough to buy a new OS and a high end graphics card for a three year old game), so the DX10 requirement came across as arbitrary. And PC gamers were savy enough to immediatly identify the DX10 requirement as utter BS, partially due to the 360 not supporting DX10, much less the original XBox.

It was arbitrary and cynical. They only released Halo 2 on the PC for two reasons. The first was to drum up some extra interest in Halo 3 by potentially exposing PC gamers to the franchise. The second was what you just said, to try to prod people into upgrading to vista. The game contained no features that couldn't be done easily in DX9 and DX10 was vista exclusive (for several not bad reasons). Essentially, the only reason Halo 2 came out on the PC was Microsoft saw it as a marketing tool. It was the same with Halo 1, actually, which was ported to get people interested in Halo 2. Note that the PC versions of both were ported mere months before the release of the respective console exclusive sequels.

As to the OP's question, they may release Halo 3 on the PC when Halo 4 is about to drop on the Xbox. I personally wouldn't bet on it since the PC market has become so small in comparison to the others, they probably think it won't be worth the investment.

 

[Treblaine]

Hmm, well sounds to me you just have a weird personal preference. Far be it from me to tell another guy "what feels natural". Whatever floats you're boat, I guess.

Similar with your resolution experience, flitting between an undersized SDTV and HDTV I can see you would get more attached to one and it would be hard to look at each output objectively.

Given the chance I would gladly take up a 60" 1080p OLED Tv with full HD up the behind, however my university student loan will not support that sort of exorbitant spending, nor will my job as a games journalist for alliancegamers.com, so i am stuck with a simple small TV that does its job, I do enjoy seeing my favourite games on big ass TVs though, the experience of MW 2 and Forza 3 for example is greatly improved when you can get the look down to the individual fibres on your characters gloves, and don't get me started on the Gears of War 2 cinematics, I do find however that larger TVs do support higher sensitivities better than smaller TVs, for example i play halo 3 with sensitivity at 8 on my home TV, but on my parents TV i set it to 10...

Well HD doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg, especially for the 360.

Have you heard of the VGA cable for xbox 360? That will output in any resolution up to and including 1080p to any computer monitor.

For example there must be a 1280x1024 resolution monitor you can get a hold of, that has the horizontal resolution of 720p (1280x720) and the 360 will support resolutions like that, letter boxing them if necessary.

You can look online for audio adapters that you can plug into separate speakers or do as I do and plug them directly into some headphones.

It is the single cheapest way of gaming in HD for the consoles and I'm amazed more people don't do it.

If you want to go the 1080p and HDMI route, that is not impossible either:

http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase14.5&prodID=1694348

SERIOUSLY good monitor... only £129. I'm gonna be begging my parents to get me this for Christmas though I could honestly buy this for myself.

full 1080p
5millisecond response time
HDMI, VGA, DVI connections
24-inch diameter screen

The days of overpriced HD are gone. And 24 inch is more than enough for typical sitting distance like at a desk or next to your bed.

I'm mainly wanting it for blu-ray movies since I have had a PS3 for 3 years now and not gotten a single blu-ray though they are now sensibly priced.

 

[whycantibelinus]

Of course it comes out 3 years after. Bungie and Microsoft like to milk EVERYTHING as much as possible. 3 years of players having to pay for the online play and then throwing it at PC gamers when nobody even really cares about Halo 3 anymore. I would like to see Bungie release anything Halo related PC first. These assholes are just trying to take our money. Personally I think the 360's hardware is either a pile of shit that is worthless and we're just paying for software and a logo, or they're purposely making it so they don't last long. Just think about it, more console failures when alot of 360 players a bunch of dumbasses who'll go blow another 300 to get another without any questions is pretty genius.

Please don't drag Bungie into this, Microsoft owns Halo and at the time Microsoft owned Bungie, so anything that happens/happened with Halo was Microsoft, not Bungie. Bungie has wanted to work on other IP's for a long time but Microsoft was making them do Halo and Reach fulfills the contractual agreement made by the two companies. In the next three to five years we will see new things from Bungie.

Microsoft is the enemy here milking Master Chief and crew for all the money they can, not Bungie.

 

[Korten12]

if it came out on pc but not windows 7 exclusive (then again im getting it soon.) I would get it. I would love to use the theater mode and forge mode.

 

[LGC Pominator]

marketing SNIP

Cheers for the heads up, i was thinking about getting a VGA cable on my lappy (it has a 1080p screen) or my secondary screen on my PC, both are too small though...

Ill definitely take a look into it for my christmas EMA boost...

 

[ActionDan]

It is possible. Wouldn't buy it. Wouldn't even care if Microsoft decided to do that.

 

[theultimateend]

I wish there was a raffle for the concept of PC gaming dying.

I just seem to foresee that the only way that'll happen is when all consoles are are enclosed PC's...which is cheating in this little dance.

Keeping in mind I largely play Console games, it is just the nonsensical idea that PC gaming will die that bothers me.

 

[ActionDan]

I wish there was a raffle for the concept of PC gaming dying.

I just seem to foresee that the only way that'll happen is when all consoles are are enclosed PC's...which is cheating in this little dance.

Keeping in mind I largely play Console games, it is just the nonsensical idea that PC gaming will die that bothers me.

Yea, PC gaming is not dying, they is still a fuckton of games coming out for the PC, I can't see where all this "Pc is dying" has come from anyway.

 

[Treblaine]

I wish there was a raffle for the concept of PC gaming dying.

I just seem to foresee that the only way that'll happen is when all consoles are are enclosed PC's...which is cheating in this little dance.

Keeping in mind I largely play Console games, it is just the nonsensical idea that PC gaming will die that bothers me.

Yea, PC gaming is not dying, they is still a fuckton of games coming out for the PC, I can't see where all this "Pc is dying" has come from anyway.

+1 to that

I mean PC has now definitively emerged as the best platform for multiplatform games with titles just in the past year like:
-NFS: Shift
-Batman: Arkham Asylum
-Resident Evil 5
-Borderlands
-Fear 2
-Left 4 Dead 2
-(also MW2, if you care)

all those easily played at 1080p, 4xAA and 60fps framerate, usually with higher texture detail even on a modestly powerful/priced PC.

...while the console releases are struggling along at 720p (or lower), never higher than 2xAA and usually only 30fps.

You know Digital Foundry tested Modern Warfare 2 recently and it turns out it can't even sustain 60fps on the 360 and for PS3 it hovered around 30fps in the intense combat scenes. All that and the game is only rendered in 1024x600... that is barely greater than SD resolution (in UK Standard def = 1024x576). So when they said 6 months ago it will be rendered in 720p on the consoles... I guess that was a lie.

I mean the only A-grade games exclusive to consoles have been First party titles like Uncharted 2 and Forza 3 where for obvious licensing reasons they are only going to be released on a single platform. For the time being at least.

The majority of developers are third party, where they are able to release their game on the PC platform ARE releasing their games on PC to take as much advantage of it as they can, they want their games to look the best and know they can reach their full potential on PC.

In fact, the only decent third-party game I can think of that has not seen a PC release this year is Brutal Legend. And was that even a "good" game?

How can PC gaming be dying when virtually every good game released this year is available on PC and BETTER on PC? Cheaper too yet ironically more money goes to the developers as unlike on consoles, no licence fee needs to be paid to Microsoft or Sony.

While I'm on a roll I might as well go on about piracy, which is not a big deal on PC compared to the HUGE used game market for console releases. How many "lost sales" are caused by Gamestop and similar stores stocking 3/4 of their shelves with pre-owned titles that they bought for $12 and sell on for $40? That just doesn't happen with PC, especially with worry over DRM, CD-Keys and is impossible with digital downloads such as from Steam/GOG.

 

[Woodsey]

Is it possible? Are you seriously asking whether a PC could handle Halo 3 or not?

Who cares anyway - it's ugly, unimaginative and not the best at what it does (by quite a long shot).

Oh, I know PC can DEFINITELY handle Halo 3. Hell, even some entry level laptops could handle Halo 3, especially if you only wanted to match 360's performance.

I was just thinking how Halo 3 could reach its true potential on the power of even a modestly priced PC. It's clear Bungie were aiming for higher resolution and anti-aliasing but they just couldn't eke that much power out of the 360.

I mean look at Capcom with Resident Evil 5 that has turned out so good on PC graphically and control wise. It certainly sets a precedent.

I will admit, I have not played Halo 3 yet... and though Halo 1 was great back in the day I played Halo 2 more recently and was distinctly underwhelmed. But it's Halo, it just seems wrong to skip it.

The game has no potential though - any graphical updates won't change the engine itself, meaning everything still looks like it's made out of plasticine.

 

[TZer0]

It would work, but no one would care. Actually, no one would care even if the PC got that game at the same time as Xbox.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Halo: CE came to PC.

Halo 2 came to PC.

Halo 3 and Halo 3:ODST will come to PC.

 

[Yumi_and_Erea]

No we shouldn't care.

Not because I dislike the game but because I already bought it SECOND-HAND just to spike Bungie.

Maybe then they'll actually make something original again instead of milking their single ever popular franchise with cheap knock-off after cheap knock-off like they're channeling George Lucas.

 

[SantoUno]

Halo 3 on PC could be possible, but I doubt it would be appropiate. It's primarily a 360 exclusive and I see no conving reason to bring it to PC.

And most people who posted here didn't have the right to, this isn't a thread so you can spout your "Halo 3 sux we don't need it we have better FPSs" rants.