Halo 3: ODST was somewhat stung because of certain marketing issues, with Bethsoft production director Ashley Cheng going so far as to say that "Microsoft and/or Bungie totally bungled the marketing on this." Speaking to G4, Bungie acknowledged that mistakes were definitely made when it came to promoting the game.
“We got criticized, fairly, for doing a poor job communicating what ODST was, an expansion pack or a full-fledged, AAA release,” said Joseph Staten, Writer & Creative Director. “It definitely turned out to be the latter. But, unfortunately, we didn’t know how much great work we were going to pull-off when we first announced the game. It’s impossible to know, but my gut says that if we’d never said the words ‘expansion pack’ we would have seen an appreciable increase in the review scores. Alas, hindsight is 20/20. But foresight is pretty hard too."
“I’d have to agree with Joe -- If you look at the lower scores, they almost all cite an issue in perceived value based on an initial expectation that was set for an ‘expansion’ and then a feeling that they were overcharged for the final product,” added Community Director Brian Jarrard. “For the most part, the gameplay and experience itself received a lot of praise with many saying it was the best of the series. Criticisms around the lack of matchmaking for Firefight and mechanics to add more longevity and community activity to the core game were fair and is something we would’ve done differently it if were possible within the scope of project.”
"I'm no PR expert, but it's pretty obvious the game had a series of stumbles; from the naming, to the initial E3 2008 countdown reveal failure, and finally pricing," said Lars Bakken, Design Lead. "It would definitely be nice to have a do-over for the game introduction."
"If anything the big takeaway for us is just to never comment on matters that are outside of our control," noted Jarrard. "While it’s true that we did come out of the gate talking about the initial smaller vision for the project, which really did vastly grow in scope during development, we never should’ve gone so far as to equate that to a prediction of final price point. As Curtis points out, that’s just not something we would ever have control over. That said, we all feel that we ended up cramming an awful lot of content into the ODST box and it’s still a great value for Halo fans but unfortunately some people just never let go of the perception that it should’ve been cheaper based on the initial expectation we set when the game was first announced."
Although ODST may have suffered somewhat from the criticism, it's not as if the game struggled. ODST dominated September sales in the U.S. with over 1.5 million copies sold.
