The marketing of Halo 3 was wildly awaited, as the game was the third in the original three-part series of the Halo videos. As a result, the Halo 3 free download was one of the most frequently downloaded video game demos in the history of the Xbox 360. But what many people don’t remember is that the Halo 3 trial download helped make another game ie Crackdown.

What does the Halo 3 trial download have to do with any another video game? Well, it has a great deal to do with the sale and promotional effort for a game that was originally planned for release on the Xbox system. Microsoft had become concerned that Crackdown wouldn’t sell a lot.

And so they employed a marketing gimmick, the one of bundling Crackdown with an access code to the Halo 3 trial download. And it worked a treat because Crackdown sold 1.5 million copies within the first half year of its release. Those aren’t Halo 3 figures, which sold 8.1 million units in slightly over a year, but for a lesser well-known game that’s absolutely fantastic.

Microsoft had turned to the Halo 3 trial download tactic because of adverse reports about the game from the play testers. They found the nonlinear nature of the game off-putting, often leaving them asking themselves what they were meant to be doing next.

Because of this, the powers that be thought that something had to be done or the game would be a dud. It may appear dodgy practice at first to try to push sales of a game that’s expected to be unpopular, but in hindsight people love the game and it was a good thing that they were able to get the chance to play it.

In Crackdown, and that includes the one associated with the Halo 3 trial download, people play the role of an agent who is assigned to beat the kingpins or leaders of different gangs. To do this they make use of some superhuman powers such as super strength and super fitness. In order to gain these powers, players have to build up experience by beating enemies who then release experience orbs. The clever part of the system was that the kind of orbs released depended on the manner in which the agent killed the enemy. For example, a firearms orb appears if the enemy was killed with a gun.

So, although at first sight this game bundled with the Halo 3 free download appears to be nothing but a veiled marketing trick, in reality, it exposed gamers to an exciting new gameplay world.

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