You’re being way more argumentative than you need to be. Not only that, but we’ve agreed on everything so far.
(Including that statement, because it’s 100% a gamble to make the sort of MTX money that Infinite failed to produce due to being a crap product. I completely agree.)
All that to say: Relax. This isn’t the blue bird app, nobody is dying on any hills here.
Hell no lol I’m not paying for Forge. I’m not putting another penny into the Halo franchise until 343 stops ruining Halo’s campaign story and the multiplayer. You only had one job for the last decade and that is make Halo games, and it appears 343 has learned little to nothing on how to do that.
You can argue that all you want.
But ultimately 343 Industries being a subsidiary of Microsoft doesn’t mean that they are outside the bounds of the rules of economics.
Point is, Halo Infinite has an estimated budget of $500,000,000.
That is the cost of production, marketing, and a few other things.
Halo Infinite went through 4 builds before the company decided to go with the version of Halo Infinite we have right now back in 2019. So all the other small teams making the other builds had to drop what they were doing and join the build-team that was decided upon.
This probably led to some people leaving the company as their project wasn’t chosen to be the final version.
The Pandemic certainly didn’t help with production time-quotas.
And all this eventually leads to Halo Infinite being released with the game being only about 1/8 complete, the servers being a hot mess, and the fans upset.
It does indeed matter that Microsoft owns 343 Industries, though not in the way you perceive it.
Yes, they were given a massive budget to work with.
Which is a double-edged sword.
Sure they were given around $500,000,000 to produce a game.
But that also means that they have to REPAY that $500,000,000 to those that gave the money to them PLUS profit interest as companies do not desire to make deficits on projects.
Microsoft sunk $500,000,000 into Halo Infinite with the hopes that it would net a profit. Which means that within a certain fiscal period, they expect what I could only assume would be the bare minimum of a profit margin which is typically 20% of the budget total in order to declare their business decision a success.
So.
That means that 343 would have to make more than $500,000,000 within this fiscal period. Perhaps it is an two year contract?
And their quota would possibly mean that they have a goal to make a 20% increase of that budget to bring in profits and not lose their jobs for wasting company time and a LOT of money.
So that leads to the profit goal being $600 MILLION.
Now.
Halo Infinite does not have the most players.
Player count has been diminishing for a few reasons. Incomplete story experience, lack of multiplayer content, server issues, cosmetics being mostly unobtainable unless you have a wallet, etc.
But which Halo game DOES have the most players?
Halo MCC.
Out of all the currently supported Halo titles, Halo MCC is the only one devoid of Microtransactions; which is honestly surprising considering the amount of development work made for MCC since 2019 with those 8 Seasons of absolutely FREE content.
Now.
You have to pay back your company owners more than $500,000,000
How are you going to scrounge up that money within a given deadline that is likely half over?
The majority of your consumers are spending their time on a platform that has no Digital Market.
So.
The smart move would be to move the market there.
Ergo, Halo MCC receives Microtransactions.
Now. Are they going to monetize Forge?
Considering that Forge was only monetized as Halo 5: Forge on the PC and nowhere else, considering that Halo 4’s only Forge DLC is a free map package; I would have to say that no, they are not monetizing Forge.
That is the beauty of Microtransactions.
As they allow you to provide content updates that a decade ago would’ve been a DLC Pack.
Without REQ Packs, Halo 5’s eleven DLC updates wouldn’t have been free-content-updates.
Without R6 Credits, R6 Siege’s Seasons would’ve likely had players require a DLC Pack to purchase both the new Operators and the new map in the early days.
The only issue with MTX is the fact that they sometimes get abused.
Lootboxes providing duplicate cosmetics even though you possess less than 5% of the cosmetics in the game.
Fortnite and Infinite selling you half a peanut for around $20 because they choose to have a rarity system for some reason.
if we really want to sustain the future development of the halo universe then each of us have to shoulder our reasonable proportional contributions to halo
Oh hell no. I’m “NOT” expecting to play the multiplayer for free but, I sure in the hell won’t pay a single red cent for a game that is broken. IE: Custom Games Area!
Peace! 
AAAAAHHH HAHAHA no, how about 343 should pay the players to try Forge and come back to the game
Where is the “Is this some kind of April fools joke?” button? Hell no - after what they did to Infinite so far.
forge needs to be become free and only be available to use for the one’s that have buy also the campaign so only for the one’s that have buy the disc or the digital version from the game and notting else.
Because they charged $20 for the Zveda armor set and several others. Monetizing Forge would be the final nail in the coffin for Halo. IT CANNOT HAPPEN WITHOUT PERMANENT CONSEQUENCES!!!
The time has been and went and whatever the outcome for this game I think it missed the boat. The game could have a generous free content rollout for the next 18 months and still be a failed game imo. I set a low bar for quality, just as good as H5, a game I dropped very quickly, and was still disappointed with the overall product despite it being free.
I got the special editions of H2 - H4 and in other games paid a solid amount of money on in-game items or dlc, i’m very willing to pay much more than base retail value if the games good. The quality or replayability isn’t there to justify a small purchase let alone a bigger purchase like forge.
“If we really want to sustain the future development of Halo, stop caring”.
Have you actually played the current build of H5? The sanbox alone is incredible, and while there are a few menu related issues, most gameplay issues have been fixed.
I don’t think they’re going to monetise forge for the record.
I think this decision would be met with uproar and, in reality, would not benefit them for content generation or game promotion reasons. They need more players in the ecosystem and an amazing creative tool such as forge could really help them combat growing disinterest in the game.
If it did happen I’d be absolutely fuming. Not because I use forge per se, but because the F2P model will have once again shafted what could’ve been a brilliant game.
Yea nah I did come back to it from time to time, and had some fun, but I more so mean my experience and expectations with both games year 1 for the 1:1 comparison. I expected early H5 as the bar and I feel Infinite did worse. I think the idea of the direction of Infinite I like a lot more but in terms of content and execution it’s a flop.
i’ll pay $60 just to have access to forge and then on top of that i’ll keep paying my game pass and microsoft 365 subscription if it means we get Mark VI mjolnir VR helmets for christmas that we can use to forge with and fly banshees and wasps around in multiplayer
personally I would buy Forge if it allows me to own the rights to play the mode and all my creation offline because that’s worth it to me. I’m hoping it will be offline accessible anyway like multiplayer already is with bots but I’m not especially confident it will be
I do get though why people wouldn’t be happy with any payment at all but I’m just sick of seeing stuff locked behind an always online requirement because ultimately you lose access to it at some point which is obviously no good to anyone like myself that will continue to play these things indefinitely
I said here before and I’ll say it again, I have no problems paying $60 for this game as long as long as the Custom Games Area is fixed, We have a Custom Game Browser and as long as Forge is working correctly. If not I see no logical reason to buy this game.
I don’t pay for crap! Sorry 
It is what it is.
Peace!
No.
But i might have if infinite launched right.
Shame too, looks like the best forge yet.
we want a clearly outlined way to access forge dev kit support for 200$ .if we want to pay extra for slipspace engine and import solid tools and extrude curved faces along a tangent etc by importing props made in Maya and a whole lot more flexibility with Forge+ than default 60$ one time forge package entry fee
I preordered infinite so I think I already did “pay for it”. I will not put a dollar more into this game until Campaign DLC
Also, never got my pre-order bonuses… thanks walmart…