Halo 5: Guardians Pre-Order Details Announced, Kind Of

If you’re the kind of person who wants to play Halo no matter what (even if multiplayer from 343 Industries on Xbox One has been absolutely shoddy so far), then today should be like a second Christmas to you. Microsoft has revealed details for pre-ordering Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox Wire, giving three options that become more and more vague as to what they actually offer as they become more expensive.

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The Standard Edition of Halo 5: Guardians costs the standard full price of $59.99 in the US, with an exclusive poster provided to those who pre-order the game. At a standard price, it only makes sense that it’s the option with the least amount of extras. From there, it only becomes less informative, with the Limited Edition costing $99.99 to provide “new digital content to enhance Spartan combat.” There are also exclusive items that come packaged in a steel book, but again we don’t know exactly what that is.

Finally, we have the huge honker of a Limited Collector’s Edition of Halo 5, running a massive cost of $249.99. It includes everything in the limited edition, plus “additional content” that includes a commemorative numbered statue designed by those at 343 Industries. More details will be provided at a later date, which one can assume will be in 2015 given the amount of days left in 2014.

I’m not that much of a fan of collector’s and limited editions of games. Even so, I still understand the concept of throwing down more money to acquire a collection of items that help shape the story of a title’s development, especially with art books and behind-the-scenes content. However, what Microsoft is doing here is representative of the very worst of the games industry. In 2014 (and soon, 2015) one of the biggest games companies is trying to charge consumers $250 for a collection of items that we can’t even see right now, based solely on the brand name of Halo. I mean, even their placeholder box is nondescript!

Considering the absolutely dreadful reputation 343 Industries has right now with creating Halo content for the Xbox One, I would absolutely advise a “wait to see if multiplayer is working” approach to Halo 5, let alone potentially throwing away a quarter of a thousand dollars on a statue-centric collection without an image of what the statue actually looks like. Even worse is that we don’t have a release date for Halo 5 yet, with pre-orders active now for a title that could conceivably be pushed back towards the end of the year.

That said, if you were one who has enjoyed the Halo 5 mutliplayer beta so far (running until January 18th), and there’s no talking you out of pre-ordering any titles from any company, then you can at least pre-order the standard title right now at the standard price from the Microsoft Store. Halo 5: Guardians is scheduled for a Fall 2015 release, exclusively on the Xbox One.

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