Halo Infinite community director explains microtransaction price hike

06.11.2023 - 20:39 / destructoid.com

As loyal Halo Infinite multiplayer players have already noticed, there have been some big changes made with Season 5.

Though many are positive, such as the ability to mix and match cosmetic items, it’s not all milk and honey, as all microtransaction prices have been made more expensive, to boot. This problem has been highlighted by Halo fan and streamer XLR8 over on Twitter, where they expressed their disappointment with how 343 Industries has been handling this particular issue.

“Even as a frequent spender,” they said, “lots of stuff simply isn’t worth the price [anymore].” For example, the featured Flood-themed Transgressor cosmetics bundle costs the equivalent of $20 for a single set of armor and a universal color scheme. In the seasons prior, $20 would net players two full sets of armor with additional cosmetics, several color schemes, and some weapon skins on top of all that.

While Season 5 of multiplayer content may have delivered some key wins for 343 early on, the fact that the studio is bumping up MTX purchase prices is an obvious point of contention for the community, to the point that Halo Infinite‘s community manager, Brian Jarrard, had to chime in, responding to the issue with a direct retort to XLR8.

Hey XLR8 –
Shop prices on many offers have changed in conjunction with multi-core functionality being added to customization content. With Season 4, we saw new shop offers reflect a new pricing model to account for new coatings being multi-core enabled. With Season 5, many…

According to Jarrard, the reason 343 Industries has chosen to increase microtransaction prices across the board is to reflect the new multi-core customization feature. As players can now mix and match their cosmetics across different armor cores, 343 believes each disparate cosmetic item is worth more than it previously would’ve been.

“With Season 5, many previously released coatings and all helmets in the game were updated to work on all cores,” said Jarrard, explaining that “and those shop offers were adjusted to reflect these changes.”

Jarrard also added that players should expect the price increase to be active across the board in due time: “While many S1-S4 offers have been adjusted, I want to be transparent that as more multi-core coatings come to bear, there are going to be more past offers that weren’t included with the initial S5 adjustments that will see updates in the future.”

Naturally, anyone who owns any of the affected items from before will be able to continue using them normally in the future, though this entire problem obviously doesn’t apply to those players in the first place.

“I understand this isn’t necessarily what everyone wants to hear, but I hope this at least helps explain what did change and