Head of 343 Industries Bonnie Ross has been speaking to CNET ahead of the launch of Halo Infinite's campaign, discussing the poor reaction to 2020's gameplay reveal in more detail, including how the team responded to it.

Ross explained that the demo showcased 343 having to make "a tremendous amount of cuts" to try and hit the original November 2020 release window, and people on the team were pointing out that a public unveiling was a bad idea:

"I do want to say there were multiple people on the team pointing out, 'Hey, I think this is wrong.' But we're all looking at it at home on whatever monitor with whatever color grading that we have. And that was a huge wakeup call for us. We did need to have those touch points with people coming in, sitting side by side — at a distance — and looking at monitors."

"We had people on the team already raising flags that we've cut too deep... And I think that was just more of a very public look in the mirror that, 'Yes, we did indeed cut corners that we shouldn't have cut,' and we needed to really take a step back and make sure that we were spending the time we needed."

After the gameplay reveal received such a poor reaction, the 343 Industries team ended up clearing out a section of their fourth floor and putting in monitors with different versions of the game along with some cameras — so that, regardless of whether the team could work from the office or not, everyone was evaluating the same screens.

And of course, we know what happened next — 343 ended up admitting that "we actually can't do it" in regards to hitting the original November 2020 release window, with the delay lasting 13 months in total. It was a huge blow to the Xbox community at the time, but based on the reaction to Halo Infinite in recent days and weeks, it definitely seems like it was for the best. Who knows, we could have had another Cyberpunk 2077 on our hands...

What are your thoughts on Ross's comments? Let us know down below.

[source cnet.com]