Halo Infinite shop prices have gone up and players are not happy
Season five of Halo Infinite has brought several changes to the first person shooter, but one of them has been more controversial than others, namely the price increase in the game’s shop.
343 Industries has responded to the upset, giving a reason for the price hikes on Twitter.
Halo Infinite may cost more but not without reason
XLR8 said: “Halo Infinite’s shop prices for S5 have been very disappointing, and even more so that they went back and increased old bundles.
“I’ve spent very little this season in comparison to S1-S4. Even as a frequent spender, lots of stuff simply isn’t worth the price.”
The tweet gained the attention of Halo community director Brian Jarrard, who responded defending the price changes.
He said: “Shop prices on many offers have changed in conjunction with multi-core functionality being added to customization content.
“With Season 4, we saw new shop offers reflect a new pricing model to account for new coatings being multi-core enabled.
“With Season 5, many previously released coatings and all helmets in the game were updated to work on all cores, and those shop offers were adjusted to reflect these changes (and to have parity with S4 offers).”
Jarrard continued to explain that prices have increased to help maintain consistency across the Halo Infinite store as more items are updated to be equipped with armour cores in the future.
He also explained why some sale prices seemed to be higher than the previous base price was.
“This is due to the underlying base price of the offer being increased,” Jarrard said. “The current sale price is lower than the new normal price but without that context, we can certainly see how it leads to confusion, perception of it being a bug or error, etc.
“I understand this isn't necessarily what everyone wants to hear, but I hope this at least helps explain what did change and why.”
Players are not happy with the changes to the shop prices
After reading the response from Brian Jarrard, otherwise known as Sketch, XLR8 shared that, while he could appreciate the detailed response, he didn’t agree with the price increases.
“While I appreciate communication and transparency from Sketch, the community was clearly not a fan of Halo Infinite’s pricing logic,” he said.
“The studio and the community are at an impasse, and there has to be a better way forward. As always, speak your ideas and vote with your wallet.”
Based on the responses to the original Twitter thread, it is clear that a lot of the Halo community disagree with the increase to costs.
“Or on the contrary, the price of everything should come way down because the store is way too expensive,” said one user in response to Jarrard.
Another said: “This system is clearly flawed and the player base is not happy about it. Some of us want to spend money on the game, but things like this hold many of us back from purchasing the thing we want.”
Many players took issue with only being able to purchase items in bundles, saying: “I don’t like bundles. I want to be able to buy just the things I want. Not a whole bundle of 15 things to get the one thing I'm interested in.”
