I have this weird feeling that 343 might be giving up… which makes me sad. After the laying off of joe staten and thousands of other employees, it feels like they may not want to invest time into this. This makes me sad because:
Halo Infinite had a chance this whole time. I still like the game.
If the team were able to HEAR us and solve these little problems, the population would definitely grow.
Honestly, I’ve learned to stop listening whenever the forums and even content creators cry Doomsday for this game and company. People are getting up in arms about how so many are being laid off and Joe leaving means Doomsday and blah blah blah.
I’m chalking it up to a lot of developers contracts running out and them not being renewed. Is it true/correct? Maybe, maybe not, but until someone high up says ‘we are not making Halo content anymore’, I’m not going to listen to data miners who heard from a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy down the grape vine that someone said (x) was getting the ax. Or content creators who have a guy on the inside claiming (c). Or even forum goers who have ‘seen this kind of thing before and yes it means the end’.
Because let’s face it; there are a lot of people who wanted Halo to fail once 343i took over and a lot more of them still would absolutely start spreading doubt to easily panicked people. So any kind of news that can be woven into misery can and will be by those people and those who are prone to panicking will spread it like wildfire.
That is a very good point. Im making this thread to get feedback from everyone. I personally am not super worried but I like to know everyones opinions
Even the first Halo, the OG version wasn’t a skeleton game. The maps were unique and had stuff going on like weather. No one cared about Infinite or the good parts were part of the 80% scrapped. Scary thought I know if we only got 20% and that was the only working parts in it
if not a disbanding of the company as a whole it’s at least looking like a pretty deep overhaul of the studio. it’s not in 343s control as a subsidiary of Microsoft to begin with. to many people in key leadership roles have either left or just got laid off the past 2 days. it’s pretty clear there was no leadership and now with new people coming in, it’s going to take time to get new leadership settled in and all that. infinite is pretty much done.
i personally however am looking forward to the changes as i have felt it’s been needed ever since H5. i have not enjoyed any 343 game, and looking at the facts of sales and player retentions, they’ve just progressively gotten worse after each game. people don’t got to like the changes, but it’s kind of a needed change to a lot of people. Microsoft is seeing it and as said, it’s really not in 343s hands to do much other than rebuild the team once all this clears up. then we see what they’re able to put out in what will probably be another 5+ years i don’t know.
While Infinite isn’t going to well I wouldn’t worry about these lay offs to much. The people at 343 that were laid off were part of Microsoft as a whole laying off workers. From what I heard on the radio these layoffs are more related to all the extra people that were hired during the pandemic. While it sounds like they laid off a lot of people Microsoft claims it isn’t as many as they hired during the pandemic. There is some concern whr Joe leaving for Xbox publishing so the question is can Microsoft get some one in charge of 343 who can truly run a tight ship and get the franchise going in the right direction. I hope to get some one in there that says alright this live service/ open world just isn’t working… Slipspace engine just isn’t working… Time to find a good proven engine… Take Halo back to a paid game with awesome multiplayer maps and a linear campaign where the missions take play is diverse environments… A Halo game that can shine right out the box so to speak since we haven’t had one since H4 on Xbox 360 pretty much. Yeah I know H4 wasn’t well liked by the community but at least it was a full functioning game from launch…not like the blunder that was MCC, or the bare bones like H5, and the multiplayer only and we will add stuff later of Infinite.
Fixing servers will bring lots back, and battle passes with cool things to fancy the masses. Forge customs etc will thrive more once ppl come back, but the damn servers are one of the biggest driving forces. And then the flawed sbmm in this game that is geared towards 1v1 gameplay and not 4v4. Tweaks would help it immensely. So damn close why can’t they close the deal?
But in the end of the day they knew what they did wrong from the very start since launch day. And they didn’t listen to any of us. Not even the fans who have been there since the begining.
Halo is not something like fortnite or any of these other free to play games that makes it’s money off of a market for cosmetics.
If 343I released the game like previous title’s. Where once the game was purchased the only other thing to purchase was map packs. The game would have made more money off the shelfs than off of their cosmetics store.
If it goes down it’s their own fault. They got their feed back and we knew this would happen eventually
if the mp live service team was the “sole” mp team i’d be shocked lol. what about the arts team? ya know? the guys whom make the maps? new weapons? etc etc? and apparently it was one of the more hit departments of the studio. acting like these layoffs won’t hurt the game mp wise is imo honestly naive,. i’d wager next season will get a pretty good delay to it. if not outright cancelled.
With credible rumors of Season 4 being canceled the future of Halo seems to be going in a coma for the time being. The move from Microsoft was a very bad decision and will take them years to recover from that mass layoff of 10,000 employees across different development studios.