So hearing of the news for 343 I was not surprised.
Alot of people seem caught off guard,
For me it was predictable, from the moment a fair amount of Lead Devs and Key Devs were jumping Ship I suspected they saw a sinking ship barely above water and decided to not let that be their legacy.
Let’s also consider the content that was pushed out and how it was pushed out. Look at Cross core, the fact that the bots had it and some glitches and mods allowed players to have it shows signs that it was in the works. But they stopped for some reason.
Split screen Co op, was 70% complete according to Sean B. That means they stopped at 70%. Forge launched as a Beta, and Custom Game browser launched Earlier but still wonky.
It’s as if they said Just launch it however, we can buy ourselves more time by saying it’s a beta and it’s going to improve… Yata yata yata, until we just go into “Anthem” mode.
Campaign has been a Content Drought for any DLC news to the point that I think it’s safe to say they won’t be Doing it. Or it has been scrapped.
Now Let’s take a Look at HCS, they had Capped the prize pool last year so they could use the remaining funds to find this year’s HCS. The Pros were not happy and it even made some teams not renew with Halo or HCS.
Halo Infinite was just a crowdfunder for HCS, and now the funding is getting tighter.
Microsoft is a Business and makes business decision. 343 and Halo Infinite we’re more than likely not generating the right amount of revenue or Popularity to continue keeping it funded. Thus what we have been witnessing is Microsoft slowly down staffing it, and slowly moving away from Halo to perhaps Usher in a new face for the Brand. My guess is Bathesda Games is the new Microsoft Show pony. That’s where most of the effort seems to be going.
But all the signs where there.