Microsoft Responds To Negative Feedback For Halo Infinite's Visuals

The 4k/60 uploaded trailer helps,. but it's still nothing next gen looking. People have been posting comparisons all over the internet to MCC on PC and Infinite looks worse in almost every way.

I personally thought it looked awesome. My initial stream struggled, but I went back and watched the 4K video and it looked crisp, smooth, and high quality.

He's right, the 1080p streaming didn't help. I was sure that the game was not finished because I saw pop-in. Some games have been polished decently before launch and I think they started making sure that the game runs at 60 FPS on Xbox One S which is no small feat. Now they'll be polishing the game for Series X.

The important thing here is that Halo Infinite has a bigger campaign than 4 and 5 combined and that gameplay and style is classic Halo. Just give them some time to finish the rest.

I have all current consoles and use my launch PS4 and switch for exclusives. Coming off the back of the last of us 2 and more recently ghost of Tsushima I have to say that visually, halo infinite is incredibly disappointing.

I'm not sure how anybody can objectively say that what we saw was "good". Given that master chief is the poster boy of Xbox and that this is arguably the flagship IP utilising a brand new engine (which looked beautiful in its reveal) this is nothing short of a disaster. Art style and graphical fidelity are not the same thing. The art style is absolutely on point, the implementation of this art style is embarrassing.

This game has been in development for 5 years - coronavirus has been an issue outside of China for 4-5 months. Gameplay looked great, but that shouldn't have to be at the expense of the visuals. A title with this length of development time, a rumoured budget of hundreds of millions of dollars and utilising arguably the biggest IP Microsoft has to offer should be able to achieve both. Particularly as it supposed to be taking advantage of a 12tf GPU, hugely upgraded CPU and a cutting edge SSD.

The thing people aren't understanding, and this extends to anything you saw yesterday AND anything you saw in Sony's presentation, is that you really won't be able to fairly judge any graphics you saw until you have the game in front of you. Especially in a generation where the major improvements will be the higher framerates, raytracing and HDR. Many people were reacting to games they were watching through a stream. Really? doesn't look good streaming to your tv huh? weird.

I watched it in 4k60fps on a 65” 4K tv and I wasn’t really impressed.
It basically looked like a Xbox one X title to me.
It will be interesting to see a comparison later on between Xbox one X and series X.
Maybe I am also a bit too spoiled by TLoU2 and Ghost of Tsushima and their graphical fidelity.

Anyway, I was fine with what was shown. Will be playing it and hopefully enjoy it. It looks “good enough”. Nothing groundbreaking.

@armondo36 That's the thing. Most people watched a YouTube 1080p stuttering streaming on a phone or laptop. The game will look much better on a HDR 4K TV. The next generation is about HDR 4K and not about streaming 1080p, it's not even for 1080p TVs. It makes a big difference. I started playing Halo CE (MCC) on a 1080p LED TV and playing it now on a 4K HDR OLED TV is literally like playing a different game, so imagine how good will Halo Infinite look on a TV like that.

People complaining about visuals when they are watching 1080p stream on a mobile device with potentially bad internet depending where they are. Nice! lol
My take in this is that Microsoft wasn't fully ready to show this but the pressure was on so they went ahead. But again, would it of mattered? Haters will hate as usual.
Personally, I don't have any problems with the graphics. With the XB1/PS4/Switch, I'm at this spot now that I don't even need better visuals. I just want awesome memorable game play and a great story.

Sorry but 4K 60fps is not going to create next gen and advantage of the series x in turns of graphical volume, amazing details and a world full of spectacular effects and environments of realism and gorgeous weather effects rolled into one to create and truly next gen game world.
Should have ditched the Xbox one and made this ground up for series x and showed a visual showcase and set the benchmark for next generation and all that 12tflop of power.
I shall not be wasting my money preordering a series x. I have had every Xbox since day one up until now, but not this time.

By the way I’m not a hater as I have an Xbox one x and been with Xbox since day one.
I just do not like with a passion the way Xbox has now gone and it’s the last straw for me.
They could have started next gen with an explosion of true power, instead we get a whimper with something that looks this gen on one Xbox one x.

Even if you watch the 4k version, the quality of the visuals are not that great. Take the pilot and compare the model to numerous games - like Death Stranding, Last of Us 2 etc. The environment is nowhere near as detailed, as full as MANY open world games and there is still indications of pop-in and noticeable line for the draw distance of certain things. Its not as if the world looked 'full' or dense either which makes it seem very 'basic' by modern games with lots of foliage and fine detail in their worlds - let alone a 'step-up' for next generation...

Visually, it doesn't seem on a par with many games this generation...

@BAMozzy
Totally agree, what have they been doing for the last five years and with a new game engine. This is my final generation with Xbox and have been with them from the very start.
I was hoping last night would change that for me but it didn’t. PS5 will be on preorder soon.

I watched the video in 4k, and still think it just looked “ok” graphically.

I’m disappointed raytracing is a post-launch patch. That makes me feel the game is being dished for launch, and I might hold from playing it for a bit.

But gameplay does look incredible, that open world mode and all the Halo 1 callbacks...

Game looks like an incredible XBox One X game.

Hmm, really sounds like he thought we would all be blown away by the graphics. Personally I voted for It looks good, but certainly is not some ultra next gen look. Thankfully the game play looked great and I'm looking forward to diving in to it. Just have to finish the MCC first...

As much as I wanted this game to be the return of Halo, it's not looking like it.

What 343i needed to do was to do their experiments outside of the main series, but they wanted to use the 'Halo 4' title to sell units. Ultimately putting the Halo franchise in to an impossible situation. Classic fans have no interest in the series anymore, and "modern shooter" fans, and those that never liked Halo to begin with, don't find anything here to entice them. And this really only appeals to those who grew up with Halo and have an invested interest in the lore, and as mentioned, is an ever decreasing pool of players.

Had this been the game that 343i showed off as Halo 4, I think it would be a different story. This would have been well received 8 years ago, but as it stands, it's too little too late. Made all the more worse that this game has been in development for 5 years.

Though that again just aligns with my theory that Halo 6 was scrapped after Halo 5's poor reception and performance and that Halo Infinite as we know has probably only been in development since around 2017.

@BAMozzy “fullness” of the world is not something I care for. Not every open world area needs to be ridiculously dense. Green planes ARE a thing in real world. And we just saw the crash site, who knows if there are forests or what not as we move through the ring.

Pop in is a concern but hopefully is addressed by launch.

It looked fine. I'm sure it will be much prettier on my 4K TV playing on Series X, though.

It is just high quaility *****.

You don't know what i need.
Xsx become to xbox one.
You will have a hard time.

When I heard people complaining about the visuals I had to double take... No issues at all. Of course it's not like it's on our TVs, it's an online livestream, what were people expecting.
Only point with merit is the cliffs... They did look a little strange and under developed, that said it's work in progress. We saw more gameplay for this one game than the entirety of the PS reveal games combined. Just feels like people finding reasons to hate on Microsoft.
The large amount of timed exclusives is a valid one, the visuals and gameplay from Halo clearly isn't

It looks good but they have prioritised the campaign, performance and gameplay this far. I hope that they have enough time to polish the graphics because it must be a launch game, they know that and the pressure must be overwhelming.

It's quite interesting that so many games weren't confirmed for Xbox One bur for Series X yesterday. I suspect that Microsoft is admitting that they have to focus on next generation somehow. The backwards compatibility with Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One is enough fan service. The cross-gen period is going to be shorter than expected.

Looked amazing for an open world game running at 4K/60fps. I loved the clean, more classic art style. The gameplay looked fun and fluid. Tons of guns to pick up on the fly. The grapple hook looks awesome to use.

@Tharsman Whilst I will agree that not everything needs to look 'dense' or 'full', it doesn't help sell a game as next gen - especially when you can see a line where the grass changes from looking like 'grass' to just being a flat green area. See the line where 'shadows' take form and where reflections pop in - made worse when travelling at speed in the warthog...

Its all well and good having 'big', wide open areas with little going on but that also shows up limitations far more clearly, shows of its 'draw distance' - and I don't mean the 'objects' you can see far off, but the distance at which things like Shadows, reflections etc get drawn in, the distance at which 'lower' quality assets/textures etc get swapped out for better quality.

Combine that with character models and the 'details' of the objects we do see, and visually, it really does look much more 'basic'. Watch the 4k Trailer and see the difference between that, especially the woman making the Armour and then the see the Pilot. There is more than a 'generational' drop in visual quality of the skin, the hair etc. When there are examples of 'better' character models, better lighting etc on Current Gen, the visuals for a AAA Next Gen 'Console Seller' are not there.

There are so many examples of 'open world' current gen games with better visuals - whether or not they have open plains. I still expected to see better trees, grass, characters, objects etc but it seems designed on 360 and given a bump in resolution for XB1 - certainly not 'Series X'....

@Tharsman the game graphically looked underwhelming almost no shadows and the lighting is so weird as well the textures are super flat that even xbox 360 games look much better like gears 3 and halo reach have far better light and shadows

@Neither_scene
I could have not put it better myself it was underwhelming at best.

Goodbye old friend, I have had some amazing times with you during the early days with Xbox and truly amazing times during your Xbox 360 days and ok times during your Xbox one days.
I’m sorry your father since those days has not treated you well and matured and developed you in the right way.
I wish you well and wish all you the best for the future. You never know we may cross paths again one day, until then take care.

@Dezzy70 You should be happy that most of the first-party games were presented as Series exclusives, not for Xbox One and Series X. You'll get those fully next-gen games sooner than expected after Halo Infinite, Grounded and Everwild.

@Thretosix Yes, it could be but they could also release Halo in December if they need one more month. It sounds crazy but...

@Dezzy70 I am going to play it, but man the graphics are so weird. They're touting it most powerful console and yet still the number 1 game looks like this gen. I seriously see no sign of any groundbreaking thing about it. Everything looked just okay, the gameplay was awesome. Plus why does Microsoft show off their games on PC?! Where's the velocity architecture and the SSD. If it were on Series X, I guess we wouldn't have seen so much texture pop-in.

Ultimately, the games we actually got to see gameplay for looked nice, crisp, more polished, and like better versions of this gen. Nothing looked like it couldn't be done on this gen, minus a fresh coat of paint. That's not a very good selling point.

@tatsumi looks like xbox 360 title TBH even halo reach and gears 3 two games from xbox 360 era looks better than this

@BAMozzy
I have to agree. The "Step Inside" trailer looks next gen; the gameplay reveal doesn't. In the end, they will make it right, but again, you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

Alarm bells started ringing for me when he opened his argument blaming the pandemic, maybe that argument works for a game like say, Forza which has likely been held back a bit, but this one has been in development for some time.

I still will likely enjoy it, and I can't honestly say it looks "current-gen" as some are, but it's just not the leap forward, not graphically anyway.

That said, to me, I'm not so concerned, it's a huge departure gameplay-wise from previous games and I'm looking forward to checking out the open-world/hub structure, whichever of the two it ends up being.

@Jaxx420
343 got the gameplay right and that's what matters most in a Halo game. They'll eventually get it looking as it should (I hope), but it's a very unexciting first showing for Series X tech.

@gingataisen agree, they've taken a creative risk and I think it will pay off.

I also don't pay too much attention to Greenberg either, I like Phil, but Greenberg has some form in dropping some PR clangers especially in late 360/early Xbox One days, he keeps a lower profile in the media now and Phil does most of the talking, thankfully!

Pretty sure most of the hate is coming from the Sony fanbase anyways. Those guys seem to get off on hating anything Xbox related. Personally I never saw the point of getting on a hate bandwagon about a game console or it's games, I just enjoy what looks fun to me and I have always had a variety of platforms.

People put too much emphasis on graphics, but that was a big downgrade. It's not even the textures and character models, those are great, they just went back to Bungie's designs. It's the lighting. The pilot's face went from realistic 2019 trailer to looking like plastic in 2020. Same great beard, same polygons, but the lighting got hit so hard. No matter what the game looked fun and the antagonist is already better than Halo 5's, but I really hope they fix the lighting and pop-in before launch. If that's how it looks on Xbox One S I'm impressed, but not for the Xbox One X let alone Xbox Series X. Despite the crap downgraded lighting that gave me a bad feeling at first, the gameplay and dialogue were so good they turned it around and got me hyped again. Hopefully the game delivers.

@gingataisen I don't know if that one-chance will have a big impact or not. Its going to be difficult for ANY developer to show the full visual quality of their games unless they can upload uncompressed 4k HDR video's of their games and in theory at least, the final game will inevitably create a greater impression when you play it.

Its not all bad - some of the game-play looked 'Halo CE' but also that game is nearly 19 yrs old now. Having a relatively large open space, relatively sparse with 'small' pockets of enemies dotted about may have worked back in 2001. It was a step up in terms of scale for the time and of course still limited by the hardware of that era but other games have come out since. It has to compete with games around today.

Maybe it will be 'good enough' for fans, but maybe it will end up feeling a bit 'dated', lacking. If they went back and 'copied' the template for the first Assassins Creed, the big open world and similar game-play loop, would that hold up today against games like Witcher 3, AC: Valhalla etc. Its not as if there isn't open world FPS games on the market that will also be vying for attention.

I am not writing off Halo Infinite because of one game-play trailer but compared to the impression we got on its 'first' reveal at E3 2018, the open world with herds of animals, the quality of the environments (flora and fauna), the grasslands etc (game engine demo), Even the Pilot in last years 'Discover Hope' compared to the Pilot in that game-play, its generationally worlds apart.

Everything leading up to the 'Game-play' looked great, looked like a step up from what we had seen. Even though Discover Hope video wasn't as impressive as some Character models in current gen, we had the expectation of Native 4k, 60fps and Ray Tracing so it was OK because current gen can't do those models at Native 4k/30fps without RT. That game play video is a massive step back from any previous 'Halo' video's - those were OUR first impressions, those were what gave us the Hype and expectation....

By the way, this is exactly why game developers prefer to just show trailers in the beginning: because gamers whine because a game doesn't look like they think it should. people are judging Halo off of 3 minutes of gameplay from a non- optimized version of the game, and comparing it to finished versions of other games in a DIFFERENT GENRE. Developers get sick of our crap, and just announce a game with a trailer.

@Jaxx420
He's the 'Direct-to-video' version of Pete Hines.

@gingataisen Haha, that made my evening.

@JayJ It doesn't, not entirely anyway. There are a lot within the Xbox community who expected more from a game years in development.

I think most of them feel it should have more.... "oomph" for a flagship title for a new console, but it will still be an amazing game nonetheless.

To be honest, I think departing so far from Halo 5, will probably generate more interest that it does hate.

Halo 3 wasn't exactly a graphical showcase back in 2007 (especially coming after Gears Of War) and it turned out pretty well in the end. Yes, Infinite may not be visually stunning - although I personally think it looks nice, all told - but we don't know yet what's happening behind the scenes, how the extra power might be used elsewhere on top of rendering a much larger world. The fact is we've only seen a very small chunk of game, so I would wait until we have more to go on before reaching for the pitchforks.

It looked good, the move to open world and targeting 4K60FPS is going to hold back visual fidelity somewhat, so you can't have everything

@Jaxx420 Yeah that was just me reacting to what I see in generalized gaming communities, I can understand how a lot of gamers have the highest expectations and how it must have not met them. Personally I liked what I saw but improvement is always welcome.

@armondo36 Rule #1: Don't pimp your ** until she's got her makeup on.

My view (I've only ever really played Halo: CE, first on og Xbox and then on X1X, and I've only watched the gameplay for Infinite on my 6" phone screen):

The gameplay I saw looked very familiar, very reminiscent of Halo: CE. Obviously better, and bigger, and sharper, but because it's so familiar looking, it doesn't really wow me as a next-gen launch title.

To me a launch title needs to be either something completely new, or something significantly different to its earlier iterations.

The fact Microsoft are leaning quite heavily on Infinite only serves to remind me that they are very much playing catch-up in terms of having a stable of leading IPs. They should be launching with a different title as their tentpole, but they can't, because they've let their games development slide so badly in recent years.

I think that part of the reason is that Halo has always had a particular aesthetic approach. Make it too gritty or full of browns/grays and you might achieve a more photorealistic look, but at the cost of looking and feeling like Halo. For what it's worth, the game looks fine to me. I never expected it to showcase the end-all, be-all of Series X's visual capabilities. The truly great franchises always prioritize gameplay and mechanics first, and as Microsoft's flagship IP, that's exactly where it needs to be.

Patronising comment from Greenberg. The issue isn't my Youtube settings, its the awful art style you’ve picked - which couldnt be further away from the gorgeous 2018 announcement trailer.

@TimG13 @armondo36 This. Perhaps it was a bad idea showing gameplay of their work in progress. I saw pop-in but I wasn't concerned, I smiled like, "Boy, this is a real demo". I saw that lighting wasn't finished but I wasn't concerned because the game is not finished. Then I watched the fast-paced gameplay and it looked good.

People, especially Sony fans, will exaggerate every single flaw they can find and say that Halo Infinite looks current-gen or worse. Only when the game is released and analysed, we'll see the final visual quality of the game. I understand, people share their opinions but I think it's not proportionate.

People are expecting far too much out of "next gen graphics". We're so far past the point of diminishing returns Gunpei Yokoi warned the industry about 25 years ago, Turn 10 would need to wait 2 generations to have the draw distance needed to render it in the rear view mirror.

No new gen is going to truly wow anyone the way people are used to being wowed. XSeX isn't necessarily about unparalleled visuals so much as being consistent with the already impressive visuals and boosting at a bit more, but also fixing the anemic computational power the 8th gen lacked. More about gameplay systems and smooth behavior, less about graphics. The era of wow graphics is over until VR rules. If you aren't wowed now, you aren't going to be.

Halo is Halo. It has a certain look designed around the turn of the millennium hardware. There's only so much that can be done before it isn't Halo anymore. The draw distance and detail is head and shoulders above past games.

Yes Sony "believes in generations" and pushes their limits. MS has been more in line with PC with a focus on scalability for various hardware. Sony will be much more marketable as always.

Halo... The formula is old... It seems repetitive, and yet, it's classic for a reason. I personally don't understand Halo being the flagship console IP. It's a long in the tooth veeeery arcade format game. That's not a bad thing for the game, but it doesn't seem like what people look for in console sellers today. Obsidians titles, Fable, Forza, etc seem more suited for that "wow" effect.

Halos just an arcade machine. But since when is that a bad thing?

@BlueOcean let's not forget HI is current gen as well..... Thank goodness Microsoft doesnt quite "believe in generations" where were beholden to a $500 piece of plastic that you'll have to sell your great great grand parents remains on eBay to buy during a manufacturing crunch in a plague just to play Spiderman DLC. I'll be playing HI for free on launch day with GP in my "current gen" machine

@NEStalgia True, it's a cross-gen game. If people demand for so much they need to remember Spider-Man DLC for PS5 is 30 FPS and needs to disable effects and do checkerboard rendering for 60 FPS. Next gen is more about better performance, true 4K, 60 FPS, ray tracing, much better CPU, no loading times... Anyway, I'm sure that future games like Fable will be more impressive visually. Halo is being Halo.

I thought Halo Infinite looked really good and im super excited to play it..

I thought Halo Infinite looked great. People always find something to complain about. It’s 4k 60fps huge open world with huge multiplayer. It’s not going to look like an interactive movie. Lol.

Gears 5 has better graphics than halo,imo
It doesn't look good, just ok

I'll be playing 1080p like most people since it is still the most used TV set up.

Would be nice if they could bump up the graphic settings for us 1080p players.

The textures and facial animations look last gen.

All they've done is increase the view distance and bumped the res and fps up.

Having said that, Halo gameplay looks great.

What I liked the most was that we actually saw gameplay, good or bad. With almost two hours of showcases between Sony and Microsoft, it’s been 95 percent cut-scenes, 4 percent talking heads and, as far as I can tell, only three instances of game footage, with Halo: Infinite being one of them.

@F3NIXII I'm sure the PC they used to show it off has a better SSD than the Series X. These demo and development PCs are top of the line to brute force the best possible showcase.

The lighting was really poor. The pop in was unacceptable. The trees and foliage were identical models copy and pasted across the world. None of this should be happening for a flagship, first party title. I'm sure the game will still be fun to play but those are some worrying signs after a 5 year, multimillion dollar development schedule.

@__jamiie Yet development started with current-gen development kit. It's impossible to have a fully next-gen game ready for launch these days, that's why Sony is launching PS5 with a mini games collection and Spider-Man PS4 DLC.

@BlueOcean There are many, many current gen games that perform better than Halo Infinite. There are no excuses for the kind of issues I mentioned. I wasn't expecting a massive leap forward this gen but this has actually gone backwards.

@NEStalgia I agree that people are expecting too much of a leap forward but this wasn't even close to being a leap forward. The performance levels shown took steps backwards in a lot of people's opinion. Pop in, identical assets and bland textures are things we shouldn't have to to deal with on a console launching in 2020. There are games that have been available for years that perform without these problems. No excuses.

So let me see, work in progress, pandemic, that’s just Halo’s art style, it’s just the Sony ponies hating, open worlds don’t have fantastic visuals, YouTube compression, did I miss anything?

Guys - this game is FOUR months (at best) from releasing. It’s not going to improve visually/graphically before launch. Most games at this stage of development are hitting the final polishing/bug testing stage. This game looks BAD. No matter how you watch it. This was an awful way to show off 12 TF of power. Please stop telling me (and yourselves) that this was even OK looking. It’s objectively nowhere near “next gen”. It’s barely previous gen. Come on!

@NEStalgia "I personally don't understand Halo being the flagship console IP."

I argued this back in 2012. MS set up 343i to keep Halo relevant, but that ignored 2 things. 1) 343i and MS didn't understand Halo the way Bungie did. 2) In order to stay relevant, you have change a game beyond its original designs, and that creates division in a community, and can itself lead to failure if your new design isn't in and of itself, a modern classic.

Take something like RE4. It really did divide the original RE community. Capcom were lucky to have Mikami, who understood RE, and thus was able to reinvent the franchise and actually grow it. And today, its a classic. RE4 also had many brand new elements, very well incorporated in to its design. 343i have never created a classic, so how could they be expected to reinvent one?.

Halo isn't Super Mario or Zelda either. It's more akin to Ratchet and Clank or Killzone. It's a 5th gen IP that doesn't have the same weight it use to. That's not to say you can't have more Halo, but expecting it to be a system seller, or the achor to your entire games line up is crazy. MS gave 343i far too much power and money and expected them to scale up the franchise as gaming grew. That was never gonna happen. Instead, 343i should have been given a smaller budget, and a simpler (less stressful and destructive) goal.

This is also why MS were stupid for doing what they did to Bungie. They should have given Bungie full support in making Destiny after Halo 3 and built 343i to work along side Bungie in making more Halo. Giving rise to more xbox exclusive IPs, and ones that have proven far more popular than current day Halo.

I thought that when Halo Infinite was shown and it was clearly inspired by classic Halo that maybe they had learnt that lesson, but it doesn't seem like they have.

I’m sure I seen somewhere that in terms of visuals it won’t be a massive leap from Xbox one but aimed more towards frame rates and this lighting.
I personally thought the halo visuals looked good and got me a little excited for it but nothing will surpass my excitement for THPS

@NEStalgia All VERY true. So many unrealistic expectations in here, and apparently a LOT of graphics experts. It's almost laughable.

Actually, forget about almost...

For people that don't like Halo, they have over 40 new games ready for launch. Of course, Halo Infinite is the first-party game for Series X launch but it's not like Microsoft doesn't have more studios or didn't show more games or that PS5 has more and better games for launch.

Besides, I honestly think that 343 Industries will polish the graphics and lighting before launch.

@BlueOcean I think people need to ignore the... shall we say.... baby steps in the graphical leap.

Open world Halo is a first. Its a creative risk and any Halo fan should check it out. I personally think it will prove to be a refreshing take on the series. I just hope the side quests arent full of open world padding.

@Jaxx420 Fans asked for a classic Halo and 343 Industries tried to recover the classic visual style, gameplay and campaign but on a larger scale.

@BlueOcean Agree I mean baby steps in terms of fidelity but that can be changed through updates anyway.

I am just happy they went back to the series roots on the gameplay front. Its almost like Halo CE in an open world. I will enjoy that.

@armondo36 Halo does not have raytracing. It will be added on at a later date after it comes out. Halo is not a next gen game, if it was raytracing would have been implemented from the beginning.

Digital Foundry have a great video up now explaining why it doesn't look like a generational leap and its all down to the lighting. Also suggests that it could look better at a lower resolution but higher settings

@__jamiie That's two different issues really you're describing bugs and defects in a beta build... That's a fair critique but it's also something they're still working on for the next 4 months and, let's be real, the year after release, as well. That's different than the general criticism that the appearance of the overall graphics is poor.

And we also have to remember that XBox isn't holding games hostage until you buy new hardware.....9 out of 10 players at launch will NOT be playing on series X at all, myself inclusive... If you have an X1 and GP, you'll be playing day 1, no matter the hardware or PC. The game will look better on the new hardware, but by the time supply is stable post launch for most of is to obtain an XSeX, we'll have already played this game.

Like botw was a wiiu game that sold best on new hardware, this is X1Xs Halo game also launching new hardware. I don't see that as a bad thing. A great looking classic huge Halo game for all MS players that looks better in the bewer hardware.

The complaining I'm seeing makes me think Sony has it right and MS is wrong. Players want spectacle and wow and are willing to splash out for tech demos.... Sony focuses on that. And wins. MS strategy is very Sega, centered on arcade type gameplay (Forza, Halo, gears)... And focused on platform unity across various price points... At the cost of spectacle, despite spectacle being possible. Here we have the Halo game people wanted. Classic play, look, feel, 4k, high fps, open world...... And people want a 30fps graphics showcase instead. Maybe Crytek can make Halo 7.

I'm not even a particularly big Halo fan and the combat reminded me why it was great 2 decades ago.

@BlueOcean @Jaxx420 My thoughts exactly on gameplay. It was pure CE.... The part before the Flood (please no flood, please no flood, please no flood). That was what made Halo Halo... I was afraid it was going to feel like a rehash when watching though. It all looked like "I've gone this before"... Then they showed the open world and grappling and melee....

I still haven't played 5 yet. I'm afraid to given the campaign criticism. Halo is the campaign to me. I played multiplayer all of 20 minutes with Halo 3 on 360 and never got why it was so popular...

@NEStalgia If they can match the joy of the Silent Cartographer level in CE I will be happy, I loved having Warthog races around the outer edge of the island with a mate, even if I accidentally killed a few of my marines crashing the vehicle.... lol.

@Richnj entirely agreed! Halos still a decent brand with a solid fanbase. It should continue and the new game looks like it plays great... Lots of fun. But it's still a B franchise to me... Nothing close to a system seller or flagship. A simplistic design is what makes it great to come back to but also what keeps it as a legacy series. 343 vs bungie aside, I'd argue that Halo was already losing steam when 3 came out, still in bungies hands..... Ms probably didn't do wrong with bungie. It was like Nintendo letting rare go..... They were already withering at that point, suck in the one hit wonder and unsure how to rework the magic. Destiny kind of proved they were stuck. 3 was better than what came after but even it seemed like it lost relevance in it's time. 343 just cemented it starting with Reach.

@Jaxx420 Lol, yeah i think this game should have been called "Silent Cartographer 2"..... It seems like that's the whole basis for the design. That mission was ahead of it's time and had a very open world feel.... This looks to take that and make an actual whole open world game out of it!

@NEStalgia Exactly, Sony went for two showcase demos for PS5 launch, Astro's Playroom and Spider-Man standalone DLC while Microsoft is making a huge cross-gen game that will be played on Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Series X, Windows and xCloud. It has the classic Halo feel on a larger scale and I'm sure that it will look great on Series X after they have polished the graphics and added HDR and ray tracing. There will be more impressive games on Series X but Halo Infinite is the end of and era and the beginning of another and everyone is invited.

The Xbox showdown was really *****, it looked like one of those ps2 games that I used to play 7 years ago. Even the clouds in the mountains show up out of nowhere suddenly, couldn’t they just at least render the showcase? Overall I think microsoft could have done much much better at this point of time, its Really bad when the Xbox 360 had a better showcase.

Frame rate and resolution doesn’t help with pop in and low-res textures though.

Gameplay looks great but I’m surprised at how it looked after all the talk Phil had been saying, especially for the flagship title.

@BlueOcean do you mean gameplay demos for PS5 as they also showed Horizon 2, Demon Souls, Ratchet and others too!

@eggsbox I said launch, those other PS5 games are not launch games. About Halo, it looks like they used an old build so the final game will look better, especially on Series X. They wanted to show the gameplay.

@Dezzy70 Xbox sold me a PS4 aswell after the zero effort they put in this gen, and miserable effort they are showing for next gen, I gotta move to PS

@Hobbesyall if you get a PS4 I’d recommend ghost of tsushima if you like samurais. Great game!

@BlueOcean you could be right but I don’t buy the “using an old build” argument.

This is the proper first world unveiling of MS’s new console - the most powerful console in the world as they keep telling us. Why show it off with something that actually doesn’t show it off? I mean the difference between that and what was shown at Sony’s recent showcase is massive. I don’t understand it.

Not only that but Halo is their flagship title, they’ve literally been planning this moment for years, why would they use “old builds?”

Nintendo or Sony don’t use old builds, it doesn’t make sense why MS would, especially at a premier event.

@eggsbox Who knows but we'll see a more polished version. I understand that you think Spiderman-Man was... prettier? It didn't impress though and it was shown at 30 FPS. Truth is Microsoft showed many more games apart from Halo but if you are a Sony fan nothing is going to change your mind. I mean, you're recommending PS4 games on a Halo thread.

@BlueOcean didn’t mean to derail the thread, just that a commenter posted about PS4 so wanted to recommend a game, that’s all.

I’m sure halo will look better when released, I’m just surprised in what was shown that’s all.

@eggsbox No problem. I'm more excited about the other games that were shown anyway.

@Hobbesyall
I had both and a switch this generation.
If I had to chose this generation in order.
PS4, Swtich, Xbox one.
Next generation PS5 only, had enough of Microsoft’s direction and PR.

Digital Foundry explains why and the good news is that the problem will be fixed with the ray tracing patch (Series X).

https://youtu.be/KnQd6W9BxLg

Basically, unlike cinematic games like The Last of Us II that uses static lighting (with a lot of inconsistencies), Halo Infinite uses dynamic lighting and what was shown was basically within a shadowy area, away from the sun and with no artificial lighting. This makes textures look flatter than they really are.

@gcunit and it's really their own fault. they've launched DOZENS AND DOZENS of IPs, just as Sony has, but they have a loooong history of bailing on a series if the first game doesn't reach whatever sales expectation they set for it. instead of Halo right away, imagine if we were getting a new MechAssault, Sunset OverDrive 2 or Crimson Skies (probably part 4 by now).....