So this is just a shower thought I had recently. Since Halo Infinite has been confirmed for a while to have a F2P multiplayer offering separate from buying the campaign, I wonder if it’s possible that 343 may launch the MP earlier than the campaign. Now, yes, this is very unlikely as the existence and press around one helps promote the other, but it’s an interesting thought. Also the earlier in the vague “2021” window they think they can get the campaign out the more unlikely this idea would be to happen (spring rather than holidays for example).
The things that got me thinking about this is the few bits of news and speculation around the delayed development and the recent esports spike.
When it comes to the delays, besides the work from home slowdown and 2021, all we got is speculation around the campaign demo reaction, and the news of Halo vet Joseph Staten coming in with the job “project lead for campaign”. Neither of these two things involve multiplayer, with the second, and only official thing, being directly about helping with the campaign.
On the multiplayer/esports side of things though, what little we have are things acting ready for launch. On the small side of things we got promos showing that skins and armor customization are seemingly ready to go. On the larger side of things, over the past 2 weeks we’ve had major esports orgs (Could 9, Envy, Sentinels) announcing their return to Halo with full signed rosters and I don’t feel they would spend the money on and hype up these rosters all of a sudden to merely play the weekly Halo 5 and MCC brackets these players were already playing that have been going for months.
Now all this multiplayer build up could mean the whole package is coming sooner rather than later, but it is making me feel that if internally they are planning on late 2021 or end up having to extend the delay for the campaign that the Muliplayer or even just some form of flight/beta may come much earlier.
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> Sounds like they considered this to keep the release date on Nov 10… but they decided to delay the game and keep it one piece.
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> I can’t imagine they would delay and still go for a split release.
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> I agree though that the delay does put some sort of MP flight/beta back on the cards.
Yeah, one of the reasons I was saying it was only really likely if they had to delay the campaign further than originally thought.
While it might be possible, I don’t think 343 will decide to launch them separate. They already decided to delay it so they could release together, doubt they’d release separately at this point.
im sure its possible but if campaign released first then MP would be dead in the water. its almost like the fall out 76 mentaility which led to its death
Of course things could change at any time but I believe as of now they will be launching as a package. From what I understand, they were thinking about doing just as you said but then Phil Spencer made the call to delay the whole thing.
At this point they might as well release them together. Had they decided to release one of them at the original launch date and saved the other for next year, it would have made a bit more sense. But now the whole game is delayed so they might as well polish both aspects as much as they can, rather than rush one.
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> While it might be possible, I don’t think 343 will decide to launch them separate. They already decided to delay it so they could release together, doubt they’d release separately at this point.
And frankly, this is only a positive for the game. I highly doubt 343 would considering multiplayer “finished” and simply put it on the back burner until release. Multiplayer is gonna get some more polish, maybe more work into forge or even more maps, though I’m not sure how long it takes to develop a map from the ground up. If anything, a Delay makes the post-launch content even stronger, depending on how post-launch content is handled by 343 of course