Feature: What If Halo: Reach Was A PS3 Exclusive?

The Halo: Reach beta was hands down awesome. If you missed it, you missed the most enjoyable Halo beta ever. That’s how great it was. The game will be out in September and will surely sell millions of copies. Easily.

But when the beta was over, and the dust settled, I thought, ‘what if Halo: Reach was PS3 exclusive? Would it be a better game and sell more copies? Would it have become the phenomenon it is today? Would we even care about Master Chief?

The PS3 crowed is a mixed bag, they buy games from all genres and that includes shooters. But I’m sure Halo: Reach would sell less copies as a PS3 exclusive for a few reasons.

First, though shooters sell well on the PS3, they perform exceptionally better on the Xbox 360. Just look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, those games performed way better on Microsoft’s console than any other.

Another reason is advertising. Let’s face it, up to recently Microsoft has been whooping Sony’s behind in the advertising department, and I’m sure the ad campaign Sony would wage for Halo: Reach would be much less that what the Xbox team would.

Like it or not, good advertising sells games, whether the games are garbage or great. Advertising properly, and using the right clips will cause a significant amount of potential consumers to at least be aware of your product, hence increasing your chances of making sales.

When it comes to quality and making the game bigger and even better, the PS3 would probably be a better platform for Halo: Reach. Again, Xbox 360 is limited to 9 gigs of space with the DVD format, unlike the PS3 with 50 gigs of space on a single Blu-ray disc. In all honesty, it just simply allows developers to do more, taking their creativity further.

There’s no doubt the PS3 owners would enjoy the Halo franchise, in fact they’ve been enjoying a similar game for years now. Killzone and Halo have a lot in common: both are first person shooters and both deal with Aliens. But because of the reasons listed above, Halo is much more successful on the Xbox 360 than Killzone on PS3.

This could go either way; if you’re a person who believes games should sell millions upon millions of copies to be a success, then Halo: Reach is better off on the Xbox 360. On the flip side if you think game quality and quantity is paramount, PS3 would be a great match.

Please understand the Xbox 360 is a venerable console and all the Halo games made thus far have been of topnotch quality. In fact some of the highest rated titles call Xbox 360 their home. Think Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 and Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. This article is not trying to label that console as a lesser player at all; only that because the PS3 allows more space and has more power, it gives developers the liberty to go further on many levels compared to being limited to 9 gigs on a DVD.