Why Don Mattrick left XBOX to go to Zynga.

Former boss of XBOX, Don Mattrick, left Microsoft shortly after E3 bringing people to believe that his departure was related to the bad press coming from both the XBOX One reveal and the poor showing at E3.

NOT SO.

In fact he planned to jump ship to Zynga for sometime to become their new CEO. It started back in 2010 when he tried to buy Zynga to boost XBOX’x line with social games. It didn’t work out, but he did become friends with Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, for who he replaced TODAY. Talks about moving to Zynga presumeably happened in March.

With pay and perks, Mattrick could earn as much as $19 million in his first year.

Hmm, so NOW can we put to rest that Mattrick didn’t give a SH!# about the XBOX One? No wonder he made ridiculous statements about sticking to the 360 if you don’t have internet connection. Honestly, if I were Microsoft, I’d slap him with a multi-million dollar suit. It was plainly obvious to me a simple gamer that Mattrick could have cared less the damage he was doing to Microsoft, knowing he was leaving.

-Sal

Okay, maybe just a few more last pics from RTX…

I didn’t get a chance to show much of the show floor so here’s a pic I saw on twitter (forgive me that I don’t have the source of the photo for proper credit.)

RTX Show floorHere are the “Guardians” of RTX.
RTX-guardians
Bravo messing around with Master Chief.
Bravo w-MC
What looks like a delicious RTX cake!
RTX Cake
and NOW finally…the RTX Wrap party.
RTX Wrap party

Until next year, great job Rooster Teeth!
-Sal

 

 

Two new armor mods coming to Halo 4. Survivor and Recharge.

Xbox’x Marjor Nelson (Larry Hyrb) interviews 343 employees, Graeme Jennings, Sr. Producer and Max Szlagor Sr. Designer as they talk about the Halo 4 Champions Bundle coming August 20.

Within is this interview there is talk about 2 armor mods. If you recall, I’ve been saying for a LONG time that there were supposed to be a total of 10 armor mods at launch. There were only 8. These make up for those not included at launch. It’s not yet known if the CSR level cap will be increased to 150 due to these new armor mods. (I hope so.) Still CSR 150 sounds/looks better than 130.

The two armor mods are Survivor and Recharge.
• Survivor allows you to be ejected from a vehicle if it’s being destroyed.
• Recharge allows your shields to recharge even FASTER. This can be stacked. Only yours, not your teammates though.

Take a listen here to the full interview: https://soundcloud.com/xbox/mnr-483-details-about-the-halo. The armor mod talk starts about 9:30. This is part of a Title Update also on August 20. This no doubt will allow for the new armors to show up in all the previous maps, as well as the weapons skins.

Also a quick note, Ricochet was stated to be available to play on multiple maps. This due to the title update. This is about 11:45 in the interview above.

Whew, it just keeps getting BETTER! August 20 can’t get here fast enough!

-Sal

Halo 4 Global Championship at RTX PICS!

Want to see what was up during the Halo 4 Global CHampionship finals at RTX? HFFL has you covered!

Our three commentators. Bravo, Gh05tayame, and GoldenBoy
Bravo-GH057ayame-GoldenboyFTW
Darth Vader on the floor mixing it up!Darth Vader running the main stage at RTX Halo 4GC tourney
The 64 finalists ready to compete for the 6 coveted spots from the RTX qualifier.
64 RTX H4GC finalists
Those are some SWEET Headsets! I Can Haz???RTX Main Stage NICE HeadsetsBravo and Ghost.
Bravo and Ghostayame broadcasting
TSquared competing in the final rounds.
TSquared at Halo4GC
Here is the vid screen set-up at RTX.
RTX Halo4GC screen
Behind the scenes tech for the vid screens and streaming.
Behind the Scenes at Halo4GC
The audience watching the action!
Main stage at RTX Halo4GC
Here is the placement from the last 8 person finals match.Finals placement top 4 IN v2

The top 4 in the last pic made it through with Footed Panda and Dale967 rounding out the last 2 of 6 spots to move on to the finals in Seattle at the end of August!

And that wraps it up for my coverage of RTX and the Halo 4 Global Championship qualifier.

Stick with HaloFanForLife.com as I continue to have more information about the Champion Bundle pack, Halo Collecting, Fan Art, Podcasting, Halo book discussions and SO MUCH MORE!

-Sal

Halo4 Global Championship RTX finals results!

SNIP3DOWN, GOOFYY, TOXIK NATE (amateur) and STRONGSIDE make it into the finals at Seattle.

The 1v1 games were as follows:
Match 1) DALE967 vs UNWIND
Match 2) FOOTEDPANDA vs CJNEW001

With Footed Panda winning the first match and DALE967 rounding out the last spot after winning their respective 1v1 games.

Waypoint forum users discuss the Halo 4 what’s next panel/Champion Bundle pack.

Here are some posts with my responses to some of the What’s next panel and Champion Bundle pack.

With regards to Frank O’Conner’s comment about there being not enough demand for vehicles in Halo 4 (like the Hornet, Falcon, Elephant)

Masterz117 wrote: I’m completely sick of this. Does 343 even bother to read the forums? Not once have they seen a thread, or maybe a couple thousand, asking for the Falcon to return?

And their stupid excuse is that “the forums do not represent the population of the game”. Then tell me why we even have forums at all. The population is already so low most players are probably on this site.
HFFL: THIS X1000! Seriously, I’ve been wanting and asking for the Hornet, Falcon, Elephant and more to be back in Halo. I am SO perplexed by Frank’s response here.

And I personally believe the forums ARE a good representation of those ACTIVE players of Halo, or at least those willing to be active in the discussion of the franchise. We are the ones who keep Halo alive from a fan perspective. So all of those who don’t or choose not to have a voice? Well, they aren’t speaking up, so with respect to them, then shouldn’t count when it comes to game requests.

I’ve seen MANY threads/posts asking for more vehicles in Halo.

I think part of the issue is that many of the maps in Halo 4 wouldn’t be able to handle something like a Falcon or Hornet. Those rare few that have Banshees should have those two as well.

As for the Elephant or Mammoth, we’d need a MASSIVE OPEN map for either/both of those.

A forum user started a thread about DLC being required. Here was my response to that:
HFFL: I’m all for an ALL DLC playlist. Though I too would like to see the map packs become required as well. Start with Crimson, then a month later require Majestic, then Castle, then Champion. Each a month apart. It’s far enough out from when they were released to have a sale. I’d suggest the two weeks prior to the specific map pack becoming required for it to be on sale.

Honestly, it’s not THAT much money for the DLC as it is. Making it required and putting it on sale will get 343 more money, but in return those who DID pay for it early will finally see it come up a lot more in matchmaking which, is the whole point of DLC.

Someone else point out that it would be nice to have a Premium Playlist and/or DLC search filter. I HEARTILY agree!
.
Another Waypoint forum users says the Champion Bundle pack should be free:
Here is one of the comments in that thread, to which I responded to:
ND3STRUCT1BLE wrote: This is just me, but I’m not going to pay another $10 on something that doesn’t effect how the game plays…
HFFL: Let me ask you this as a hypothetical question then.

Do you buy new clothes for yourself?
Of course you buy clothes. Why? DO they affect anything? They make you look different. Maybe nicer, grungy, goth, whatever your preference is. Point is it’s still just a piece of clothing. You don’t need it, but you buy it because you like it.

Same goes for this. People like have new armor, skins, etc. Sure, it’s digital clothing and isn’t tangible. But we’re in the digital age. This is CHEAP compared to what real clothing is nowadays. UNless you’re going to a bargain store, clothing is expensive. You’re not getting a quality shirt for $10.’

Yet, for that same $10, in this bundle pack you get 4 armor sets, 7 separate weapons skins, a complete weapons skin pack for all weapons, 2 maps, 7 new stances, 3 armor skins and a new gametype.

Sorry, but that is a LOT to just give away for free and IMO is totally worth the 800MSP/$10US.

With respect,
HFFL

And finally, a thread that the new game mode Ricochet is the new assault. Hoping that this gametpe will be customizable, I responded in kind:
HFFL: I’m going to bet there will be options in forge to customize Ricochet. Have the goal be really small and make it take 5 seconds to arm. In this way, you’d be VERY unlikely to be able to throw a ball into it and have it stay there for 5 seconds. So you’d HAVE to run it in and stand on the goal to arm it.

BAM, Assault!

Sometimes the Waypoint forums can be a real bear to read, other times you see some great ideas. One thing for sure, Halo fans are very well diversified in our tastes with respect to gameplay, DLC and the like.
-Sal

A CLOSER look at the Champion Bundle pack Armor/Skins/BONUS content.

Lots of good content was revealed in the Champion Bundle pack yesterday. The BONUS content however was a little glossed over, so I’m going to take a few minutes to show you and talk about those bonus in a bit more detail.

First up the Armor.Infinity Armor Pack n RicochetAs we see if you buy the whole Bundle pack you’ll get these armors. You can also buy the first three separately should you not want the maps or weapon skins. The Ricochet armor comes with the map pack portion of the bundle if you buy that only.

Personally, I’m happy with ALL four armor sets. I know a lot of people will be happy with the Mark V. Believe it or not, this is the least favorite of the four for me, though I can see some fun throwback machinima happening with this armor set.

The ODST armor has been asked for since BEFORE Halo 4 came out. It’s VERY good to see this come to the game after so long. I have an idea for this armor for a machinima and I’m sure a lot of other people do to. Not to mention that MANY of the Spartan IVs seen in Halo 4 were formally ODSTs.

Prefect is a Forerunner-esque armor style. I’m REALLY digging this one. It looks like the visor CAN change color. Gawd, I hope so. One of my minor peeves with some of the helmets in Halo 4 is the inability to change visor color. I’m looking at you CIO… I wonder what the secondary color pattern will look like on this armor?

Finally, the Ricochet armor. You can see how this was totally patterned off of American style football uniforms. The shoulder pads jutting out, the face guard. I SO hope this is useable outside of Ricochet, but from what I understand it’s not. Hmm, guess I’m going to have to make a custom game to use this.

Next we have the weapons skins. I’ve given them names here. These names are NOT official, just my interpretation of what I see. Though it would be cool if I’m right on some of these.
Bonus Weapon Skins v2
So we get 2 Magnum skins, an AR skin, 2 DMR, and a BR skin.

The Magnum skins are ok. Hard to tell from the graphic though.
The “Shark” AR is definitely going to be a hit I think. I’m already maxed out with the AR in Halo 4, but I’m definitely going to use this from time to time!
The “Deep Blue” DMR skin is nice. Come to think of it, it has the colors of Fireteam Majestic. Hmmm.
The next one, Tiger Stripe, I think is likely to be one of the favorites of the weapon skins. I’m totally diggin’ it!
And finally what looks to be a Jungle camo skin for the BR. Definitely like this skin. I just wish we had a good jungle type map to go with it. Though the new map Vertigo may go nicely with this.

And lastly we take a look at the stances. This graphic is small, so I had to try and blow it up a little. Still hard to see so bear with me.
New Stances
So starting from left to right here are my names for them based on what I think I’m seeing:
Cracking Knuckles – Looks like the Spartan is cracking his knuckles ready to smash someone in the face.
Salute – Pretty obvious one here. I’m betting on this one being used a lot.
Arms Crossed – Again, hard to tell by the graphic, but it does look like the Spartan’s arms are crossed.
Han Solo – This is SO the classic Han Solo pose from Star Wars.
hansolo See what I mean?
Reload – This could also be called “Tribute” as in a 21-gun salute is a tribute to fallen soldiers.
Stealthy – Looks like the Spartan is about to Assassinate. OR this could be “Heisman” as it does sort of look like the Hiesman pose which would work well with the new Ricochet game type.
Kick Back – Really hard to tell what’s going on here. Kind of looks like the Spartan has a leg up on something. You can only see the top half of the Spartan. Too bad too, as it also looks a little like the “Captain Morgan” pose. Now wouldn’t THAT be cool!

There are also 3 Armor Skins, though those were not clearly shown in the panel yesterday. In fact while they showed Spartans in position front and back, the Spartans were in White, so you couldn’t tell what the skins were.

Also, while this is separate from this bundle, don’t forget there are also McFarlane Armor and Weapons skins coming around this time too. Check out THIS ARTICLE to see those skins!

-Sal

Happy Bungie Day 7/7!

Though they are no longer in the business of making Halo games, we still need to be thankful for Bungie’s creation of and longstanding role as caretaker of the franchise. Many gamers are planning a “Populate Halo 3 day” or “Populate Reach Day” today in honor of Bungie.

Hmm, I might just pop in my Halo 3 disc and play on The Pit to reacquaint myself, in response to the great news coming out of RTX yesterday with regards to the Champion Bundle pack.

In other news for 7/7, though it’s not Halo related it’s still Space stuff and cool, none the less. Mars rover “Opportunity” hit’s it’s 10 year mission mark today. It was only expected to last 3 months on Mars. Way to go SCIENCE!

-Sal