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BuggeryBugz

Member
Oct 29, 2017
725
This seems like the right move to me. Keep 343 on Halo MP/forge and hopefully the battle royale releases as well. Then see what other studios can come up with in terms of a single player narrative game.
Having 343 just focus on the MP side will create a better experience and more content in the long run.
 

Karateka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,940
I had not even considered using one of the COD studios making Halo. I don't know if that would be a good thing or a terrible waste of talent and resources.
A COD studio on halo is the kind of thing that would make a younger me wallow in misery so it sounds about like something that would happen.
 

Sec0nd

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
6,150
I believe it. Not much more left to try. They've had 5 games to get a handle on things and they've all been massive failures, apart from the HCE remake, lol. Honestly I don't even think the studio should even stay onboard as franchise coordinators as they were also in control of the Halo TV show and that has turned into an absolute shit show as well.
 

Karateka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,940
I honestly think they treated it like a reboot.

One thing I struggle to understand is how a game with over 20m players can still be considered a failure internally? I mean how much more does a GAAS need to be considered successful?
It was free to play. It has to make money, it almost certainly didn't make the projected amount of money that the studio Wanted.
 

Lumination

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,672
I don't necessary see this as a bad thing. Honestly, keep around the creative design leaders that know how to retain the Halo "feel" and let another studio handle it from there.
 
Oct 25, 2017
9,572
What's crazy to me is that halo infinite is really fun to play. Like they made a really good base halo game. How the fuck did the higher ups let this happen?
 

balb

Member
Oct 30, 2017
638
Well, unlike Halo, COD is going to be available on Playstation consoles for a long time even after the merger. Whereas Halo is still exclusive to Microsoft's platforms.

I think MS isn't about to abandon the very franchise that made Xbox a household name. They'll just give the franchise to another team - which is what they should have done after Halo 4 and 5 failed to reignite the franchise in any meaningful way.

I don't see CoD being on PS6 so we'll see at that point.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,430
Give Halo the time, resources, team and budget it needs, even if it a next game wouldn't come out this generation. I know the plan for Infinite was to last for several years, but it seems like it ain't happening and we all know how hard it is to come back from a bad launch.
Infinite got that, MS even gave 343 another year and missed Series X launch. It's time to just give it to a new dev.

The Halo universe and the gameplay of Infinite is ripe for regular campaign DLCs. I can imagine a world where we get a new Halo campaign every year, like getting a new season of your favorite TV show. But of course, someone at 343/Microsoft wouldn't see value in that so it was cancelled.
Yeah i think the lack of diverse biomes was due to planned DLC, i really hate this games as a service shit.
 

420blzUP

Member
Oct 6, 2022
726
Why would Microsoft take any COD studio of COD and put them on Halo? That's like exchanging Dollars for Dimes on per unit basis.
 

Vic_Viper

Thanked By SGM
Member
Oct 25, 2017
29,199
Halo Infinite had such great promise, its a shame this is where things have ended up. This just seems like a crazy move considering Halo is one of their biggest franchises. Why wouldnt you want to keep it in house?
 

DanielG123

Member
Jul 14, 2020
2,490
Until there's more concrete evidence and information for this, I'm personally not crying wolf yet, even if some of this wouldn't surprise me. It's one source, though.
 

Ascenion

Prophet of Truth - One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,335
Mecklenburg-Strelitz
I just got this weird feeling if the Acti/Blizz deal goes through, One of the 3 COD studios is gonna be handed the reigns for a Halo game.
When would they have time to do it? It's imperative that Microsoft NOT fuck with the cadence of CoD. Even switching to a new game every two years you still have to let them work on it. The two years thing is likely out of necessity seeing as how it takes a minimum of 5 years to ship a AAA title.
 

BrickArts295

GOTY Tracking Thread Master
Member
Oct 26, 2017
14,040
Nothing against 343 but looking from the sidelines, they have managed to get away with quite a lot over the years. This outcome is honestly not too surprising, specially now that MS is about to own most of the top FPS devs in gaming.
 

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
56,757
Halo Infinite had such great promise, its a shame this is where things have ended up. This just seems like a crazy move considering Halo is one of their biggest franchises. Why wouldnt you want to keep it in house?
opportunity to get fresh ideas, faster time to market, reduced risk by co-development ventures, etc.
 

Karateka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,940
MS has to take care of artists and let them direct their games, not executives or people interested in the money. Let them finish the game and then figure out how to monetize it after, don't stuff monetization efforts in haphazardly beforehand.
 

SirKai

Member
Dec 28, 2017
7,653
Washington
SP content is incredibly expensive to create. If their goals are to thrive with post-launch monetisation, they would need to massively step up their game with the Battle Pass implementations and purchasable cosmetics. Relying on post-launch SP content is really not advisable. And I would argue that they have made the right decision here, assuming all of these reports are true in some way.

I haven't really worked on a game with paid post-launch SP content nor have spoken in depth with people that have the last few years, but even just a decade ago, it used to be that you would get 10-15% attachment on your post-launch SP content compared to the base game. That is, for the sustainability of the business and how costly the content is to make in terms of money, time and people, not great. It is one of the reasons why companies sell Season Pass packs with or even ahead of the launch of the base game, because selling those when the content comes out, often times months after the release of the game, reduces the attachment rate by a significant amount.

I think the Destiny 2 Expansion style model would be ideal here, which precludes a ton of stuff that's not strictly "single player/campaign." But for Bungie to deliver that, they've basically killed D2 PvP to focus on the PvE content like new zones, campaign missions, seasonal stories, raids/dungeons, etc. With Infinite being billed as a "platform," Destiny 2 looked like the most logical comparison in terms of delivery and updates and probably what folks expected, but D2 makes a lot of sacrifices to get the content cadence it has, and it's still hardly perfect. Even in the most ideal circumstances, I think a lot of Infinite's PvP focus would be on the chopping block to deliver campaign/PvE updates.

Selling Infinite as a game that would effectively halt the need for any new Halo games in the Series S/X generation was a huge mistake.
 

Septy

Prophet of Truth
Member
Nov 29, 2017
4,094
United States
If this is what's happening then it's for the best. But also Microsoft missed a big opportunity not acquiring Bungie if they're going to start contracting out Halo games.
 

Dringus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,945
Pretty mind-blowing for Halo to be treated this way.

More annoyed when I see these insane acquisitions meanwhile existing first party not given the resources they need. Like Halo of all franchises should be insanely solid and leading the way for Xbox.
 

Lynd

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,458
Whats the point, you still need a developer. If your unhappy with results, change/hire new people and continue under the same dev?

All this would do is hire different workers under a new company anyway.
 

Cerulean_skylark

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account.
Banned
Oct 31, 2017
6,408
after several attempts with no success, i think this is the most healthy option for the brand. Really sucks for those folks at 343 though
 

Killer

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,353
Is it really mishandling? I don't think there was really that many good paths forward once Bungie was done. It was an almost impossible task to not only replicate what one of the most celebrated shooter devs in the industry does, but then build on that and make something even bigger and better. 343 wasn't set up to fail, but as far as the expectations on them, they may as well have been.

Bad management certainly led to issues, but mishandling imo implies that it was something easy to handle in the first place.
Yes it is mishandling. You can mess up a game or two, but three(or four if you count MCC) games in row for this franchise is just malpractice.
 

Begaria

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,668
Maaaaaybe hand the franchise over to iD. I'd love to see what the Doom guys do with a space marine in green armor that shoots things can do.
 

BarnabyJones

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,536
It's for the best. They haven't been able to live up to the legacy of the franchise that Bungie left behind & drove Halo into the ground. Hopefully they work on a new IP or something like that
 
Oct 27, 2017
779
Before Bonnie Ross quitting, Joseph Staten with a small team was preparing to ship multiple contained Campaign DLC to expand its narrative over the months or even years. This plan was stopped when Pierre Hintze and the new key roles came in after Ross as they've seen too much complexity in creating new contents for Campaign + was not enough profitable for them to sustain, so they decided to completely halt them in favor on focusing on MP only for the time being (this may have led to Staten deciding to leave too)

Ahhhh. This really annoys me. I love Joe Staten and was looking forward to what new stories he would bring.

That said, if Microsoft are allowing other teams to work on Halo campaigns, then this new plan SHOULD work out well in the long run. I'd rather have 343 Industries focus their internal teams on a mainline MP game over several years (which is what they - the top - seemingly only care about) and have multiple little Halo SP games by external teams, instead of waiting 5-6 years for 343i to release one mainline game that they will ultimately fuck up anyway. At least this way we could get a gem of a Halo SP game every few years. Now we can at least get some good stories that are NOT focused on Spartans, as 343i only really cared about them (see what they did to ODSTs). Let's get a good stealth game about a Marine trying to survive the Flood.

It's almost like Microsoft will now treat Halo like Disney is treating the Star Wars license. Instead of having one company (EA) create all the games, we'll now get multiple companies releasing multiple games. Much better.

What a fucking shitshow this has turned into, though.
 

Rumenapp

Forza Photographer
Member
Nov 9, 2017
13,044
What had me the most excited was the possibility of different campaigns or locations on the same ring and now that's cancelled :(
 

Shemhazai

Member
Aug 13, 2020
6,682
the guy that said this left like 3 months later and it was never brought up again as far as i can remember
Seems like there was still something resembling the 10 year plan as of late 2021 as per an interview with Wired (not sure how much of implication is editorial though), but they were mostly talking about it within the context of the multiplayer (though that itself would imply that they wouldn't be making a separate standalone game for a while).

But yeah, I just thought it was a funny comparison point considering how much faith they originally seemed to have in the project.
 

Vinc

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,413
Truly devastating if true. Halo needs a studio that fosters it, relegating Xbox's premiere franchise to "taking pitches from external developers" is a truly bleak outlook and would show a stunning lack of commitment. I'm not really inclined to believe this rumor as written.
 

Neverx

Prophet of Truth - One Winged Slayer
Member
Sep 17, 2020
2,794
Florida
This is so depressing but not really surprised. I can't believe how poorly managed Halo has become since Reach.
 

TheMerv

Member
Jan 1, 2022
1,608
I regret abandoning PlayStation lately
You know it's funny cause I recently got a PS5 in anticipation of Death Stranding 2 and I'm sitting here looking at Bethesda, Id, Arkane, Obsidian, etc and thinking...

Well shit did I go with the wrong console? Well I'd probably feel the same kind of regret either way Xbox or PlayStation.

Guess the secret third option was to build a PC eh?
 

Flavius

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,386
Orlando, FL
I regret abandoning PlayStation lately

It's a hot take. And yeah, as someone who's been primarily Xbox from the very beginning and only Xbox this gen?

I'm starting to agree.

Doesn't mean they can't turn it around, but they definitely have some work to do. I'm sure a AAA launch or two will have me singing a different tune, though.
 

Lukar

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,743
A real shitty one because it still was kinda a sequel to 5 except the cool stuff with Cortana happened off screen. Another reboot so soon is going to be tough to swallow.
I enjoyed Infinite's gameplay in the campaign, but I'm still disappointed that it was basically Halo 7, with Halo 6 just... not existing.

I know not everyone liked where they were taking Cortana's story, but I can't stand when people don't have enough confidence in their own story to properly see it through. It's jarring to see 343 shift their story priorities three games in a row, with there never being a clean transition from the end of one to the beginning of the next. I still stand by the ending of Guardians being cool as shit and setting up something that could have been great, and deserved to be more than just relegated to backstory and being an excuse to be stranded on another Halo ring.
 

Jerm

The Fallen
Oct 31, 2017
5,848
nothing is preventing you from getting a playstation

I don't recall saying anything was lol…

I'm just saying I'm leery about MS's direction after repurchasing my library digitally and such a lengthy subscription. I feel like fellow fans suggesting to go back to PS says a lot about where others are at.
 
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