For what it’s worth. In case you missed it, you might find this interview with Bonnie Ross worth reading:
How Microsoft fixed Halo Infinite after facing the franchise’s biggest test yet
ttps://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/how-microsoft-fixed-halo-infinite-after-facing-the-franchises-biggest-test-yet/
Halo has one of the longest development times for a regular running series in the industry. Why does it take so long?
Ross: I’ll be transparent: I think you could probably see it was not intended to be quite as long. We needed time to overhaul the engine, figure out free-to-play and figure out how to have a more expansive world. And so, just that tech infrastructure just took a lot more time than we had had planned. I think that there’s a lot of learnings on doing both, as they were both new things for us to do. So I would just say that those just took longer than we had planned to do that. And then you can add COVID in there to make it even harder to do anything.
etc.