Well, have they done this copyright thing for their other books?
7 games, three mainline and four spin-offs
26 novels
A dozen comic book lineups
An anthology book of short-story novellas.
Sorry, but I’m placing my bets on a book and not a story DLC.
I dunno.
I think that when people found out about this copyright, they immediately assumed it was for Halo Infinite Part 2.
Even though Part 2 being a story DLC probably doesn’t need to copyright the subtitle since it is, well, an expansion pack and not a stand-alone product like a book.
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Seems like something that could strengthen you’re argument, if it has happened in the past.
I have no idea what the precedent is for 343 to obtain a copyright. I doubt it for a DLC (unless it is something major, bigger than any halo DLC to date), no idea for a book, almost certainly for a game.
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They can’t seem to get any legitimate amount of content out for the game, so I wouldn’t be surprised. If the Unreal Engine thing was true they wouldn’t have to onboard people for months on end. Everything we hear from “insiders” is that this game is a real mess.
So yeah, maybe they would take a hit if they just released a new game without fixing this one. But would it really even matter if it takes six years and no one is really around anymore to play it. Its a gamble either way.
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That looks like info from one of the MS share holder meetings that the news outlets got the quarter after Infinite launched. Just line H5, it broke a tone of revenue records for Halo, but a bunch of people dig their heads in the sand and say “it wasn’t successful” because they don’t like movement shooters and that’s the direction H5 leaned towards
If it were to be a spin-off, that would mean that 343 would get another studio to do it, just like they have done before.
Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike were developed by Vanguard Entertainment.
Fireteam Raven was developed by the joint-efforts of Play Mechanix and Raw Thrills.
Halo Wars 2 was made by Creative Assembly.
Halo CE Anniversary and Halo 2 Anniversary both were developed not by 343 Industries, with Saber Interactive focusing on the campaign remasters and Certain Affinity making the Anniversary Map Pack for Reach and the Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer.
If there were to be a game being made in Unreal Engine 5, that would mean it has to be a spin-off game.
Which means it would not be developed by 343 Industries but rather another studio they commission.
Which means that the game would have to be developed within 18 months as per Microsoft’s third-party developer contract policy.
So if we don’t see anything about a new Halo spin-off within a couple years, then it definitively means that this Unreal Engine 5 game is just a rumor and nothing more
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Or that they are just switching to Unreal for their next game. We really don’t know. I would like to see Certain Affinity make a Halo game from the ground up though.
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Yeah… no.
Halo has always used the Blam! Engine for their mainline games, and the Slipspace Engine is just Blam! 6.0 but with an excessive and haphazard overhaul.
Either way, Microsoft sank way too much money into the engine upgrade so they aren’t going to let it sit and gather dust. They are likely going to update the engine to work out the kinks from its overhaul upgrade.
As for Certain Affinity making Halo, technically they already did. The founders and original members of Certain Affinity were eight ex-Bungie developers who were part of the development for Halo CE and Halo 2. Their first project was literally making map packs for Halo 2.
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From the ground up I said. I’ve been around for a while. I know what CA has done for Halo. You don’t have to explain to me.
Also, your traditions mean nothing when it comes to business. Whatever tools they need to accomplish what they need to at the lowest cost is what they will use. I would like more from Infinite, but if its true that the engine is the problem and we would get content faster with a new game, Id take that. Yeah it would take a couple years, but after that they would actually be able to deliver on a live service.
If waiting for Infinite to get its blam together is faster, I’ll take that too. My point is that the industry doesn’t care. Sunk costs only go so far.
I like Infinite’s gameplay like everyone else does. I’m just kind of tired of 343 taking so long to finish the game and fix the problems. Its been almost a year after release, after a year delay. How long are they going to keep pumping money into a game that less and less people are playing each day and has no possibility of competing with the other leading shooters out there?
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Look, I like Rambo but they have a sincere habit of making up wild speculation and asserting it as fact.
This however is entirely true. They’re definitely not switching to UE5, and the reason for that is… hilariously, financial.
Microsoft does NOT want to share its Halo profits with Epic.
Actually.
DO YOU GUYS (COLLECTIVELY AS A FANBASE, NOT YOU TWO) KNOW THAT EPIC OWNS UNREAL BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T THAT’S KINDA’ DISAPPOINTING AND SHAMEFUL AND YOU SHOULD REALLY, REALLY UNDERSTAND HOW COMPETITION IN THIS MARKET WORKS.
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At this point, im pretty sure the cost of getting new contractors up an running with the mess slipspace is, the poor standing because of not beeing able getting content out, the small player base and the poor press infinite is receiving would be very much liked to be traded in for the share epic would get.
Theres a reason UE5 costs money… you get a polished, well known product to deliver content with which makes you profit.
Slipscae costs money internally to get it sometime to a state wherr you probably make money… if there are still people around playing your game.
Deciding which way to go seems pretty obvious to me.
Take the good stuff from infinite, support the MP for the next two years and reboot it in 3 years with UE5.
On the other hand: 343 isn’t a Developer known learning from their mistakes… at all. So it would fail anyway again.
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100% agree that they wouldn’t want to give revenue to someone else if they didn’t need to but Microsoft and their subsidiaries have actually used Unreal Engine for dozens of games and have a number of new games currently in development that will be using Unreal so I wouldn’t say it is impossible but I would agree that it’s ridiculously improbable that they would switch to UE at this point.
From a financial perspective, Epic take a 5% cut once your game makes a certain amount of revenue but even then with quite a few projects that 5% cut is going to still works out cheaper than creating, maintaining and working with your own game engine. You’d have to imagine that Microsoft might be able to leverage it’s size, first party status and existing business relationship with Epic in order to negotiate better terms.
I very much doubt we’ll ever see a full cost breakdown for Halo Infinite but I imagine a good chunk of money has been spent on developing the Slipspace Engine and given how much grief it seems to be giving the developers I could well imagine that it’s costing them more than 5%, for all we know (and admittedly we don’t know) the game might have been released sooner if they had just used Unreal or the game might perform better resulting in more revenue or the reverse could be true.
I do agree with you that if Microsoft and/or 343 don’t have to give Epic 5% (or a similar percentage) they’d obviously rather not especially since they have gone to the trouble of creating their own engine for Halo but we’ll never know for absolute certain how it would have impacted their revenues if they were licencing an existing engine rather than developing their own so I don’t think anyone could really state as a fact that future Halo projects, whatever and whenever they may be, couldn’t use another engine.
I’d love to know, just for personal curiosity how Halo Infinite would have performed, both in a technical sense and a commercial one if they had gone with another engine.
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It makes absolutely no sense what so ever. I’d completely ignore it.
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Truth.
The only thing of Halo that Epic “Owns” is the Master Chief Fortnite model, and that is only with partial ownership.
I get it.
And yeah, Certain Affinity has rarely failed; with the CoD: Ghosts multiplayer schematic and Halo 4 multiplayer schematic being their only two notable failures to date.
I do agree that CA should be spearheading a project.
Honestly it surprises me that Halo Online was a product of Saber Interactive and not Certain Affinity.
Oh boy, so you definitely don’t understand.
You do know that any game made with UE5, a share of those profits per sale, go to Epic right?
Do you have ANY idea how much microsoft would LOSE with that?
I don’t think Microsoft could actually leverage that - and what’s more, Epic is a DIRECT competitor in the games publishing market. They are not, absolutely not, going to fuel their competition like that.
That’s just it though. That money’s not going to a competitor.
That’s the thing. Certain Affinity is only an assistance studio, they’re not a core dev. Same with Saber Interactive.
Y’know what happens when you ask the B-Team to dev? You get Mass: Effect Andromeda.
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That was also designed to fail thanks to EA’s meddling.
Basically EA doing what EA does best.
1 - Acquire a studio and their IPs
2 - Make money
3 - Get greedy
4 - Meddle with development
5 - Eventually the meddling will get in the way and deteriorate the studio and numb their products
6 - Sales drop
7 - Liquidate the studio to make a profit to compensate for all the money they over-invested into the studio.
EA grows too fast and doesn’t understand the limits of the economy.
Honestly they need to stick to sports games.
dude, read my post. oO
Oh, and i’m working with UE5 professionally so yeah, I know a thing or two about it;)
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Gods I so, so, so doubt it.
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Just throwing it out there
‘Microsoft has an enterprise-wide, multi-year Unreal Engine license agreement and has invested significant resources and engineer time working with and customizing Unreal Engine for its own games on PC, Xbox consoles, and mobile devices (including iOS devices).’
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-has-thrown-their-weight-behind-epic-big-battle-apple
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I think Microsoft (or their studios) have used Unreal Engine something like 30 plus times which I suspect makes it their most used engine. There’s a strong business relationship there which has been mutually beneficial and with Microsoft acquiring Activision and Bethesda they’re going to be pumping out lots more games so it makes sense for Epic to consider being somewhat favourable towards Microsoft, especially given Microsoft’s support for them in their lawsuit with Apple and the fact that the two companies are collaborating with regards to the ‘metaverse’ and with Fortnite.
I don’t know the terms of the multi-year enterprise-wide licence agreement that they have with Epic for Unreal Engine but I suspect it’s probably better than the 5% or there wouldn’t have been any incentive for Microsoft to sign it if it’s no better than the deal that is just standard when using Unreal. Clearly Microsoft feel that using Unreal Engine is often in their own interests and clearly Epic are happy to have them as a partner.
Halo is one of their biggest franchises so the $ value of a deal would likely be higher than most if not all of the times that they have used or potentially even will use Unreal but obviously none of us can say definitively what the cost of using Unreal over the lifespan of Halo Infinite would be versus the cost of developing Slipspace, clearly in this instance they decided not to go with Unreal but they might well be regretting that given all the technical issues and delays Infinite has experienced.
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