And let me ask you all this, do you like the idea of Infinite: this sort of hub for future Halo content, a sort of MCC for the next gen, where everything’s distributed there, or would you prefer they just stick to the normal traditional game release style of separate releases?
If they truly want Halo Infinite to be a long term live service, they have to absolutely nail the base gameplay first. We’ve seen far too little to know where 343 wants to go with Halo Infinite gameplay wise. The community is still split on movement mechanics. Long term anything isn’t going to work if you don’t have a solid foundation. A (somewhat) unified community is part of that.
Overall, I’m not against it. I just don’t have faith in 343’s ability to pull it off.
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> If they truly want Halo Infinite to be a long term live service, they have to absolutely nail the base gameplay first. We’ve seen far too little to know where 343 wants to go with Halo Infinite gameplay wise. The community is still split on movement mechanics. Long term anything isn’t going to work if you don’t have a solid foundation. A (somewhat) unified community is part of that.
>
> Overall, I’m not against it. I just don’t have faith in 343’s ability to pull it off.
They’ve clarified that it’s not gonna be a live service like Destiny, it sounds like it’s essentially gonna be like MCC 2.0, the hub for all future content where everything’s gonna release on this rather than on different discs, etc. Agreed, we’ve seen too little, so we’ll have to wait and see.
I have a question about this:
If it’s going to be similar to MCC, then will 343 be able to release a Halo Infinite sequel (or prequel spinoff) that’s a FULL fledged game? With huge graphical upgrades, next gen design, and its own gameplay mechanic?
I’m NOT talking about going from Halo 3 to ODST. I’m talking about going from Halo 3 to Reach. But on the Infinite hub platform.
Because for some reason, I feel like having Infinite as a platform entails that future games after Infinite will have similar to graphics and same gameplay mechanics to Infinite. Essentially a bunch of Halo 3 ODST type games. Rather than a FULL new game with its own mechanics and etc.
> 2533274949216347;4:
> I have a question about this:
>
> If it’s going to be similar to MCC, then will 343 be able to release a Halo Infinite sequel (or prequel spinoff) that’s a FULL fledged game? With huge graphical upgrades, next gen design, and its own gameplay mechanic?
>
> I’m NOT talking about going from Halo 3 to ODST. I’m talking about going from Halo 3 to Reach. But on the Infinite hub platform.
>
> Because for some reason, I feel like having Infinite as a platform entails that future games after Infinite will have similar to graphics and same gameplay mechanics to Infinite. Essentially a bunch of Halo 3 ODST type games. Rather than a FULL new game with its own mechanics and etc.
Yeah, I think things like “Halo 7”, etc. will essentially be brand new games like in the past, but instead of releasing separately, they’re all just coming to the Infinite. At least that’s what I think they’re intending.
I doubt MS and/or 343 know exactly where this is heading.
It’s a new world we are heading into… where consoles now thrive for nearly a decade… and Game Pass is the preferred distribution model for games.
The ‘service’ will evolve over the next few years. Halo is going to be a bit experimental in that regards. Some bits may not work… but it will be interesting where it takes us.
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> > 2533274949216347;4:
> >
>
> Yeah, I think things like “Halo 7”, etc. will essentially be brand new games like in the past, but instead of releasing separately, they’re all just coming to the Infinite. At least that’s what I think they’re intending.
In that case, I personally wouldn’t mind having Infinite as a platform. In fact, doing so may make things easier when it comes to selling and distributing the game. It’s more focused and acts as a “center stage” for things to build off of. It’s easier for communities to bind together and enjoy.
The only potential caveat I can think of are glitches, bugs, and other technical issues that may arise when adding a new game. Like what happened with MCC on PC.
I just hope 343 doesn’t treat “Halo 7” and other future titles as if it’s ODST and half a** the project.
I mean its ambitious and sounds like a great plan to have for the franchise however I’m still waiting how well the execution is until we have year or 2 of such hard to say how well its going to go
If the basis is solid: yes. Because I think that MCC as it is now is a perfect example of the Xbox philosophy. Old doesn’t mean obsolete. You can still play those games when the newer things come out. I like that. Plus: H3: ODST and Spartan Ops have shown you can easily do great side stories on top of existing games. So why not streamline that and build it from the ground up to work like that.
On the other hand: if the base game sucks…you know it will be difficult to tweak it for the better over the years. However, I don’t believe a 10 year plan will continue if the base game is universally hated.
For a studio that tends to make pretty drastic changes in gameplay mechanics between sequels, I’m not sure what a “platform” means. I see it difficult for them to keep the same gameplay throughout this “ten year plan”, especially when on one hand the classic fans are opposed to the proposed gameplay, and on the other hand the notion of keeping the same gameplay for ten years seems to conflict with the modern fans’ “games need to evolve” motto.
On the other hand, if it’s just like MCC, where we actually do get completely new games every few years, but they’re just accessed through a single interface, then I see no meaningful difference to the old model.
I’ve said it before: I don’t have much confidence in N year plans in general. I have less confidence in them in an industry that historically evolves very rapidly, and I have even less confidence in one from a studio that has historically not shown any signs of consistency over the years. But as far as the idea of it is concerned, I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other.
Considering the difference in quality between games has been decreasing over the years I’m fine with it.
CE to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to Reach were all fairly big jumps in graphical quality but from then on it hasn’t been much at all.
If they wanted to stick to Infinite by adding to it with story and multiplayer DLCs I’d be fine with it as long as the vanilla content is worth the initial price.
I’m not a fan of Infinite being a HUB game personally. The MCC is fine for what it is; however, I find that it fails to capture the full effect of what each of those games were in their prime. Eventually HUB games lead to waning populations which will in turn lead to combining or removing/rotating playlists that weren’t popular enough when split between multiple games, but that would have been fine if the population was primarily on the most recent game.
As far as the 10 years plan goes, we will just have to see what happens. A lot can change in 10 years. Just like the forerunner trilogy became a saga, then got apparently sidelined for a whole new faction. Who knows what 10 years will bring
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> For a studio that tends to make pretty drastic changes in gameplay mechanics between sequels, I’m not sure what a “platform” means. I see it difficult for them to keep the same gameplay throughout this “ten year plan”, especially when on one hand the classic fans are opposed to the proposed gameplay, and on the other hand the notion of keeping the same gameplay for ten years seems to conflict with the modern fans’ “games need to evolve” motto.
>
> On the other hand, if it’s just like MCC, where we actually do get completely new games every few years, but they’re just accessed through a single interface, then I see no meaningful difference to the old model.
>
> I’ve said it before: I don’t have much confidence in N year plans in general. I have less confidence in them in an industry that historically evolves very rapidly, and I have even less confidence in one from a studio that has historically not shown any signs of consistency over the years. But as far as the idea of it is concerned, I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other.
> 2533274968894951;2:
> If they truly want Halo Infinite to be a long term live service, they have to absolutely nail the base gameplay first. We’ve seen far too little to know where 343 wants to go with Halo Infinite gameplay wise. The community is still split on movement mechanics. Long term anything isn’t going to work if you don’t have a solid foundation. A (somewhat) unified community is part of that.
>
> Overall, I’m not against it. I just don’t have faith in 343’s ability to pull it off.
These two posts pretty much sums up what I think in a nutshell 
Do I like Infinite being a long-term platform?
Nope. Not in the slightest. And it doesn’t matter which of the two cases happen.
As has already been mentioned, if “Platform” means that all future releases will be built on the same foundation, gameplay, engine, etc., then all of Infinite’s inherent problems will stay for a decade. The graphics look hideous and for me personally, the gameplay is unappealing, so I’m not interested in getting more of that, even when it’s slightly tweaked.
If, however, Infinite is to serve as a game Hub à la MCC, that comes with its own set of problems, most of them of technical.
First of all, all future titles would not be standalone games but be released as DLC, and as such be at the mercy of Microsoft’s horrendous DRM system. MCC on PC has already shown how new releases can completeley break prior ones, if they work at all; every time I downloaded an Update for the PC-MCC, the game would tell me that “Halo CE is not installed”, or “Halo 3 is not installed” or something of the sort, even though I was literally playing it the day before. The only “fix” that worked was completely reinstalling everything from scratch. Have fun doing that when Infinite will include three full-fledged games of 100+GB.
Secondly, 343 already claimed that it was a challenge to develop the MCC because of “x different engines” in one package (even though it’s actually all the same engine, maybe except for the UE4 used for the customization preview). Apparently it’s a strain on the hardware to have the game constantly swap back and forth between titles. Now imagine the same thing happening with a collection that actually uses new technologies that were not one generation removed from the hardware. And then again optimizing it for multiple systems, not only because of the PC players, but even if (or rather when) Microsoft abandons Infinite on the XBone, they will release an Xbox Series X+ some time over the next ten years.
And that’s not even touching on all the creative limitations that come with the “platform” concept, namely that all future titles will have the same UI, content needs to be fit into the same unlock system, etc.
I want to know if it’s really a platform, will they be supporting the game on Xbox One for the entire 10 years? Let’s be honest here. Xbox One is already holding the game back so much IMO, idk how it will be a few years down the line. The Xbox One Jaguar CPU is so outdated, I can’t imagine how much of a pain it is to make games like Infinite, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. run on it. I don’t expect them to cancel the Xbox One version now, especially since the game is built with it in mind. It is very much a current gen game, with enhanced graphics, ray tracing and 120 fps multiplayer on next gen.
I can’t really say as of now. I think for me it depends on how the mp plays. If it’s good, then hell yeah I like the sound of it bring supported for years to come. If it’s not good, then I wouldn’t want that to last 10 years. It all depends on the gameplay foundation. As far as campaign goes I think it’d be cool to have an MCC style hub with content released every few years.
I’m very skeptical of it and don’t have much faith in it. My biggest issue is we don’t know how it’ll work. If you ask me, if they learned anything from MCC it’s that cramming multiple games made in different engines under one title and expecting them all to just work perfectly isn’t exactly feasible. If it was just going to be a Halo launcher then fine but that doesn’t sound to me like that’s what they’re doing.
The way I sounds to me is basically all future Halo content is going to operate as DLC under the one “Infinite” title. Ten years is a very long time. Obviously, everything is going to be built on Slipspace and there’s probably going to be different revisions of Slipspace over the years. It’ll make more sense to just have all the games run under the latest verison instead of cramming different versions of Slipspace together under one title.
Even with this approach, I still have concerns that this just is not going to work. Again ten years is a very long time. I think that basically what is going to happen is this is going to be like Halo Custom Edition where there’s newer content built onto it but it still feels old and somewhat crappy. All technical issues present with Slipspace are going to be carried through the years and all new content is pretty much going to feel and look very similar. I am most concerned with the technical issues that could present themselves. As demonstrated with MCC, I don’t think 343 is that great at fixing these kinds of things. The gaming scene could be completely different in ten years. Maybe in 10 years 200+ FPS is the standard, everyone has 10Gb fiber optic internet, and a 120Hz tickrate is commonplace. Will slipspace be able to scale to adapt to this? If not, can it be easily reprogrammed/ adjusted to do so without breaking everything that was functional before? What if something fundamental like the networking needs to be reworked, or optimizations need to be made for the better hardware of the day? What if in 10 years we no longer use x64 but some other architecture? Will they be able to pull it off? The answer from MCC is basically no- it’s going to be a technical mess and nighmare to maintain, especially with how ambitious their plans for Halo are probably going to be.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. We still don’t know specifically how they’re going to do it or for how long Infinite is actually going to be grown upon. I honestly don’t think this is the best way to go and it would be better to do individual numbered releases, but who knows maybe they’ve just created the future of gaming as we’ll know it.
Something I do wonder is what they’re plan is gonna be when the file size of Infinite gets enormous.