Various rumors: I'm calling shenanigans

Games Halo Infinite
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I don’t need to say or post the various rumors going on about Halo’s development cycle but I’ll say this right now.

Do you actually, in all honesty, in complete earnest, think that the same studio that had to can (for the time being) co-op development, ACTUALLY has the resources to work on a fourth game?

Fourth, because…

Ongoing MCC support, Infinite development (insert joke here), working on Tatanka… I do not believe this wishful thinking that Joseph Staten is doing anything more than penning the DLC or sequel.

It just doesn’t make sense.

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Plus, Halo Wars 2 still gets bug fixes (once in a blue moon anyways).

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I think MCC is mostly being worked on by a support studio isn’t it? I thought someone had found out a bunch odd the seasons were basically made by an external studio… could be totally wrong.

If any sort of big platform revelation happens, they would probably just cancel anything not announced on the last road map that dropped, and move people to whatever new project as they finish up their obligations.

I think fixing Slipspace and the rumors both feel like crappy choices at this point. I love Infinite’s game play a ton, but the content stream and technical performance are just so inconsistent it’s crazy.

Rumor or not, there’s almost sure to be a huge relaunch of the game in the next couple years imo.

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Well, what are they working on, really? From our perspective it looks like they took our money and ran off.

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It could be the reason why development is so slow for Infinite. We really don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe they need to just start from scratch to actually turn the ship around.

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Season 2.5, 3, 4 content. They’ve been playing catch-up since E3 2020 and that is a verifiable fact.

And it can happen. Rainbow 6: Siege, No Man’s Sky, Destiny, Destiny 2, Battlefront II 2 (EA - yes, it really did have a massive relaunch/success after later adjustments and fixes) - the list goes on and on and on. Hel, even Splitgate is an example, ish.

Nah, too much money in this one. They’re very likely to make it work as best possible. People said Halo 5 needed to be abandoned too - that it was a travesty, now people favorably look back on it.

Happens every single time.

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Yeah, but feels more like falling behind than anything else.

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I’m honestly surprised at how intact Halo Infinite is to begin with.

We are dealing with 343 Industries after all.
They are known for two things -
Terrible Art Style + Good Story + Bad Multiplayer = Halo 4
Terrible Art Style + Bad Story + Good Multiplayer = Halo 5

It only makes sense that when they make an attempt at a Good Art Style + Good Story + Good Multiplayer, then the equation is impossible and requires the variable of “game incomplete” in order to make the math work out.

I would wager that since there were multiple builds of the game being made at once, with only one of them being chosen as “The One to Reach Alpha”, it led to a lot of half-effort work from the rest of the crew that didn’t get their version of the project chosen.

Ergo, Halo Infinite is an incomplete mess of a game.

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They’re doing their best, I genuinely do believe that. That doesn’t mean it’s good.

But I have a hard time being mad at them with how the fanbase treats them - at this point I just outright pity everyone working at 343i.

It’s good to see you again but this is absolute nonsense.

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I just wouldn’t be surprised. All we hear is how broken the game is under the hood. I like the game play when it isn’t affected by desync, but there’s gotta be a reason why the content and fix rollout is so slow. And eventually there is always a point where companies cut losses. Not saying they are doing that, just reiterating that I would not be surprised.

Might cost too much to fix a game with such a dwindling population and consumer base. Would be nice if they fixed it, but if a new game would release in working condition sooner than that, I would take that.

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It’d cost even more to develop a brand new game - and imagine trying to sell a new Halo while they can’t even fix this one.

“No no, we’ll do it right this time guys - promise. It’ll be feature complete, and we won’t ABANDON it like Infinite!”

That would not work.

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I heard after forge they dropping halo infinit and work endless which they be useing unreal engine 5.

Since slipspace under hood seems ball yarn at this point takes them couple month to do single update.

They made remake out forge vs actuall dev kit on halo 3 that made wait 2 more month.

So it’s bad

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I just don’t understand the appeal of waiting another 6 years for a new game that has an incredibly high chance of sharing all the same issues when they could just spend that time on Infinite pushing the franchise forward for once. It needs the MCC treatment not H5.

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Blockquote I don’t need to say or post the various rumors going on about Halo’s development cycle but I’ll say this right now.

Do you actually, in all honesty, in complete earnest, think that the same studio that had to can (for the time being) co-op development, ACTUALLY has the resources to work on a fourth game?

Fourth, because…

Ongoing MCC support, Infinite development (insert joke here), working on Tatanka… I do not believe this wishful thinking that Joseph Staten is doing anything more than penning the DLC or sequel.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Blockquote

So, a few things.

343i isn’t working on Tatanka, thats Certain affintiy 343 has nothing to do with tatanka, and if we are to believe the rumours Tatanka isn’t even being built with the slipspace engine.
This makes compete sense.
Slipspace is a mess, there is so much technical debt 343i admitted that in the beggining it was difficult to add playlists to it.
So it makes complete sense that if CA were also having issues with the engine they would want to swap their development over to a more stable engine

At this point, its also fair to say that infinite has been an unmitigated disaster, its also fair to say that with as bad as the engine has been I don’t see them developing on said engine in the future,
If the rumour is true and CA has swapped to the UE5 engine I completely expect the next halo game to be built on UE5 as well.

It also makes sense that if infinite has not been a deemed successfu internally at microsoft that the “10 year plan” has been scratched, if anything this would be par for the course
Destiny, Anthem, Fallout 76 etc etc etc
All of these games had “10 year plans” all of these games cancelled those plans.
it also stands to reason that if they have dropped the 10 year plan that some of the studio has begun working on the new halo game, especially Staten who has undoubtably started the script for the next game since hes campaign lead.

All of these rumours are completely plausible to be honest

Also, I really need to leard how the quote function works now ahahah

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They cant abandon infinite now, imagine how furious people who paid for mtx would feel.
Id find it kind of funny, but 343 cant just start halo 7 no matter how bad theyd want to.

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This sounds cool to learn more about. Is there anywhere with more info on it, or is this just info you heard when we were finding out how not great Infinite’s development had gone?

Back on the main topic, the best argument I’ve heard so far for a huge change like the rumors is that a BR with an update pipeline as slow as Infinite’s just won’t be able to compete with Apex, Fortnight, Destiny, and CoD.

It’s not even like the volume of Infinite’s customization content has been super low tbh. But the inability to make technical updates to squash bugs and improve server infrastructure in any meaningful time is a non starter to compete with the big dogs.

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Unfortunately this issue with the fanbase and treatment of devs is a major problem… A good dev doesn’t need to be treated like that and if they can leave to avoid it… They will.

Priority-0 isn’t just an indictment of the gaming industry… It’s a desperate recruitment plea from 343

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It is definitely on Slipspace. Slipspace is proprietary, Unreal is not. Microsoft wants to save that money. That and Tatanka code bits we’ve seen line up with Slipspace.

Halo: Infinite has been an incredible financial success that broke a myriad of records for Microsoft as a company. Its support has been hard and not great but calling it a failure is ignorant of what it’s done business-wise.

It’s copium. No offense but it reeks of, “Our boy Joseph Staten will save the day alone!” and that’s… Just not how ANYTHING works.

Yeah I straight up would not at all have the spoons to work at 343i. I mean, Bonnie Ross sure didn’t - I do not blame her for her departure at all, I’d have folded MUCH earlier.

Yeah - but the gaming industry is definitely in shambles rn.

Like, we like to pretend this is a Halo problem but when Infinite Warfare launches, in the state its “”“beta”“” is in right now? Less than a month from now?

Ohoho man get ready for that media storm.

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Even though it’s made a bunch of money, there are reports that internally MS execs believe Infinite hasn’t met expectations. It’s a very general description though, so we don’t know if the context is revenue, fan reception, player retention, game pass subscription driving.

It’s kind of like H5, where it’s initial launch made enough money to show there’s still a ton of interest, but the perceived long term performance wasn’t “top of industry”.

I have no idea what’s next for Infinite. Fixing Slipspace seems expensive and years of work. Rumors seem expensive and years of work. Maybe we’ll start to see Joe and company’s vision start to take hold and everything will smooth out. He’s been in charge about two years, and 3-4 years in is when new executive original ideas start to really materialize

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Where are you getting this information from? The only “record” I’m aware of is the 20M downloads. Which is about as useful information as 7-Eleven telling us how many customers came in for a free Slurpee on 7/11 as if it were some metric for revenue.

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