Halo Infinite MTX just got more expensive – but also a bit better

Some of the prices in Halo Infinite’s shop have gone up for Season 5, causing a bit of backlash among players, which 343 Industries has now responded to with an explanation of the reasons behind the change.

Having spent some time playing Infinite’s latest season, which kicked off back on October 18, Halo streamer XLR8 recently took to social media to call the revised item prices that came with it “very disappointing”. One aspect of the pricing changes that seems to have particularly drawn their ire is the fact that they have also affected some older content, which has nothing to do with the new update.

“I’ve spent very little this season in comparison to S1-S4,” the streamer asserted, “Even as a frequent spender, lots of stuff simply isn’t worth the price.”

Their tweet has now garnered a response from Halo community director Brian ‘Sketch’ Jarrard, who said: “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,” Jarrard explained, “With Season 5, many previously released coatings and all helmets in the game were updated to work on all cores, and those shop offers were adjusted to reflect these changes (and to have parity with season 4 offers).”

The community director went on to suggest that part of the reason so many prices have been changed now is to try and maintain relatively consistent pricing across the store as more items are updated to make them able to be equipped with different armour cores as part of future updates. “I understand this isn't necessarily what everyone wants to hear, but I hope this at least helps explain what did change and why,” he added, having pointed out that any helmets, coatings, and shoulders players already own will automatically become their new multi-core variants as soon as these arrive.

“While I don’t agree with this mentality and think the pricing system should be taken back to the drawing board a bit, I always appreciate you sharing info like this and being transparent,” responded XLR8.

They later added via a separate tweet that, in their view, when it comes to the pricing changes: “The studio and the (Halo) community are at an impasse, and there has to be a better way forward.”

Despite the timing of the broadcast seemingly lining up pretty well with the launch of season 4, Halo Infinite was noticeably absent from June’s big Xbox Showcase, with Phil Spencer later clarifying why this was the case.