I don't think a free weekend would be a huge driver to note, but I do think it's the sort of thing they should be considering in the lead up to eventually bundling it into the base offering.
They need some way to try and entice people who already own the system, but did not yet buy the game, to consider picking it up. Bundles only solve the issue for new console buyers or people who are buying a second console.
Honestly, it isn't even this. halo fans just played halo, they didn't go to ps4, they idn't buy xbox one. they bought an xbox for halo/halo 2. they bought a 360 for halo 3. They didn't buy a xbox one cause, well they didn't play halo in 4 or 5 years, why pick up an xone to play a game they no longer like.
Like I said, I know I am using a lot of my own experience but you'd be surprised how many halo fans honestly only played halo. they aren't really gamers.
Every single time I talked to one of my hardcore halo buddies online about other games, they have no interest I can't even talk to them about it. It's like talking to your baseball teammate about some card game, they just don't do it.
So many of my online freinds only played halo
A kid in TN, had 3 xbox's just for halo. He didn't play other games besides showing his penis on uno to whoever. I didn't join that, but there you go.
Guy in LA, just halo. I asked him him else he played wow was it. Nothing else.
i also had multiple accounts just for halo, it was just the thing most of us did
Kids also bought new xbox's just to gain host advantage (not sure if it's true) but apparently you get host on a new xbox for the first 500 or so games so MS can evaulate your xbox, who knows. So many things are made up through halo.
I had hundreds of guys on halo, most of them only playing halo for the most part, I'd say 30 percent played other games such as cod and another 10 percent that played a variety of games in general.
When I wanted to play and talk other games (as I am a very very avid gamer) I had to go completely away from halo players to do so. message boards or through the other games themselves. Halo fans are honestly just halo fans and MS and the world apparently just doesn't get it.
Since I played high rank halo, with semi pros and people that were really deep into it, I was in the halo universe pretty deeply.
IT's very true that people payed for halo 50's. It's vey true that people went through 3 months like nothing. People would honestly have 10 accounts and 50 ranks on all of them.
Various reasons why people did this. for fun, or just to sell or whatever.
I had another friend that cared about his rank and wins so much that he refused to play social. he had like 12,000 ranked games and he would not play social on it. yeah it's stupid but all of this shows one thing, how much people value the gameplay and their accounts in halo. I never saw this sort of thing going on this much in the games after halo 3 and that is where we had the big change.
i stand firmly in my belief that 343 possibly can't make a halo game that the fans want, and just maybe if we could get it maybe some of the fans would come back. How big of a portion, not a lot but more than what we are seeing now.
When COD had sprint, I never saw halo ffans saying they wanted it they only talked bout, come at me bitch, you can't our BR me. It was all about the game, the BR, the gameplay. i stand by my feeing that the game doesn't need sprint, just like Mario doesn't need a dash move or something.