Halo 5 spent a year advertising a game it did not ship
"Hunt the Truth" campaign marketed a story the game did not contain
The market's verdict: +0.7% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
Microsoft spent a full year on the Hunt the Truth campaign for Halo 5: a podcast, live action ads, all of it building a story of Agent Locke hunting a traitor Master Chief. The game that shipped on October 27, 2015 was a Chief-light ensemble piece about Cortana, and scenes from the trailers simply did not exist in it. IGN published "Halo 5's ads lied to you" the day before launch, and in 2017 franchise director Frank O'Connor admitted the storytelling criticism was "absolutely merited" and the lack of Chief "a huge disappointment". A bait-and-switch at the scale of a console generation's biggest exclusive, acknowledged, never refunded.
This one is well documented.
Links
↳ caused by Halo 5 "Hunt the Truth" campaign (2014-2015)
Timeline
- Oct 26, 2015 Stood by it Microsoft stood by it.