If you head over to the Xbox Games Store right now, you'll notice that Halo Infinite's campaign listing is up. Something you might easily miss is that it's priced at £54.99, almost 25% cheaper than PlayStation's first party party games, which are priced at £70 for next-gen consoles.
It's not just Halo Infinite though, as spotted by Eurogamer, the recently launched Forza Horizon 5 is also similarly priced, suggesting that Microsoft's games will overall be cheaper than Sonys. The two giants have usually priced games at a similar level, so it's surprising to see Xbox listing a lower price, despite the fact that both these games are also available on Game Pass.
Around this time last year, Jim Ryan came out and justified the £70 price point of PS5 games. "If you measure the hours of entertainment provided by a video game, such as Demon’s Souls, compared to any other form of entertainment, I think that's a very straightforward comparison to draw," he said in an interview.
Whether it's a pricing strategy to undercut PlayStation exclusives, or whether Microsoft fixed the price point without any of that in mind, the fact that two of its flagship games are priced almost 25% lesser than its competitor's is surely going to be a topic of debate among console fans.
Unfortunately, it seems that the co-op campaign and Forge features will not be launching until 2022. "At the time that we talked about campaign co-op and Forge I said our goal is to ship campaign co-op in Season 2 and our goal is to ship Forge with Season 3," said head of creative Joseph Staten. "Yes, we are extending Season 1. So our goal still remains what I said before, which is to ship campaign co-op with Season 2 and Forge with Season 3.
But is Halo Infinite's campaign worth the price? Here's what we thought in our preview: "After spending years doubting that Halo Infinite would deliver, the campaign thus far is an ambitious reboot of everything that makes this series so special. Master Chief and Cortana have always been at the heart of Halo, and by focusing on that and the freeform experimentation of Combat Evolved, 343 Industries is finally onto a winner."