Halo Studios has announced that it has been working on an update for Halo: Campaign Evolved that introduces a host of fixes and improvements. The update will be released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S next week, and the studio has noted that players with mid-mission saves need to be careful since their saved progress will be invalidated. However, unlocked Missions and Rally Points will still be retained.
The fixes coming with the update include Sgt. Johnson potentially blocking mission progress, Jackals not having reliable stagger when their hands or feet are targeted, and Marines and Flood Marines not firing their Assault Rifles with the Magnified Skull being active. Players are also getting some more choices, like the ability to disable Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain. All of these will be wrapped around general game-wide stability improvements.
Halo: Campaign Evolved was released just last month, and has seen plenty of critical acclaim. In our review, we gave it a score of 9 out of 10 thanks to how good its combat feels thanks to the inclusion of sprinting, and revamped gameplay and enemy AI. Halo Studios celebrated the game’s various accolades with a trailer.
Despite this, however, analysts believe that the title may have ended up underperforming. According to Rhys Elliott of Alinia Analytics, the shooter’s release month saw it getting overshadowed by Activision’s decision to shadowdrop Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2. Despite it being the first Halo game to come to PlayStation, Campaign Evolved only reportedly sold around 351,000 copies, compared to the two Black Ops games selling more than 11 million copies collectively in the same period.
Elliott noted that this, along with the presence of other older games in the top sellers list above Halo: Campaign Evolved, indicated that PlayStation seemingly preferred nostalgic games in July.
“July’s PS5 chart, then, is clearly all about nostalgia and the catalogue. A proven, beloved old game, dropped at the right moment and, just as importantly, at the right price, can out-earn almost anything new and buy a bit of breathing room in the slate. CoD got it. Halo didn’t. Fifty dollars for what’s essentially a graphical touch-up of a 2001 game was always going to be a hard sell, and players clearly weren’t having it.”
More recently, Elliott has estimated that Halo: Campaign Evolved has sold around 1.2 million copies across all platforms, earning $67 million in revenue. With around 42 percent being Xbox users across console and PC and 41 percent being PlayStation users, Steam is believed to be the worst-performing platform for the game.
The analyst believes that it comes down to the fact that Halo: The Master Chief Collection is already available to PC players at considerably lower prices. Along with the original Halo: Combat Evolved, the collection also includes other games in the franchise, as well as PvP multiplayer, which is noticeably missing from Halo: Campaign Evolved.
Neither Microsoft nor Halo Studios have made any official comment regarding sales figures for the remake.
