Halo Infinite's Disc Reportedly Doesn't Include The Full Game

Newsflash!

Games that ship on disc are never the final product anyway!
It's just a key for the digital download.
We are not in the days of the cartridge, it has been this way for years.

Wow. This definitely makes me glad I didn't bother buying the disc. The whole point of getting it is to be able to play without internet connection.

In glad everything is being covered, but man it is wild, seeing all these strange pieces of news that go directly opposite of what Microsoft has been saying.

This as an example, being the anthesis of their "game preservation" speeches given. Particularly from Phil.

This isn’t good if true. I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s happened but if you buy a game on disc you should be able to put said disc into console and play without any need for an internet connection or additional download, even if it’s not the most up to date patched version of the game. Very strange times we’re in.

Although many games are “playable” from the disk at launch these days, truth is almost no game disk contains the finalized game anymore. Day one patches has become way too common.

Only way to get a completed disk tends to be to wait a year or two and then hope there has been a re-press with an updated disk image.

Nintendo seems to be the only one that launches near finalized games on cart, with only online features being patched in day one, and obviously DLC being later additions and separate digital only products.

Right on the heels of Phil Spencer beating his chest about preserving games.

And few weeks after that statement the flagship franchise for Xbox drops the ball.

As much as I understand the criticism, respect it. The game is intended to receive “updates” over the next Gen.

Not to mention, we are unfortunately past the point of no return on this. In fact, I’ve seen people pointing out that even people like Limited Run generally end up with an older version of a game and you need to download the updates.

I expect this from nintendo games due to being on 16-32 gb cartridges but not on 100GB blu Ray discs.

Writing has been on the wall for a long time. Physical media these days is dead. It's rare to get a game fully on physical media these days. Patches and free dlc or even paid dlc makes physical obsolete and until that changes game preservation will have to rely on the community and the internet.

It sucks for people with slow/limited internet connection. Maybe the game is all there but microsoft made it so that it needs an “unlock” on the 8th just so people can’t play in advance

I'd like to know how the poor chap deals with gaming on PC.
Must be a real nightmare for him LOL

Some games are bigger than what the disc can store. Many games are patched after launch and I don't like it but I'm used to it now so I try to wait a bit until they're patched. I disagree with John about "game preservation" because knowing how Microsoft care about it and that there aren't any licence issues like with some Xbox and Xbox 360 games, the game will always be available even after these Halo Infinite discs start to fail. Nintendo, on the other hand, shut the Wii and DSi shops down years ago.

They seem to be messing up their biggest release of the year.
I’m on gamepass still cannot seem to pre download the campaign anywhere. Just tried right now and only have the multiplayer part downloaded.
So I won’t be playing day one due to my slow internet speed.

They could have put just the Campaign on the disc so that at least would make sense. Xbox is the worst for physical media for sure. Best at digital though, so you know…

I got a series s, so most of my gaming is digital, as well as my backlog. But nevertheless, if I bought physical, I would expect to be able to play out of the box. Whether it needed a day one patch or not.

@UltimateOtaku91 Um, Nintendo doesn't ship non-functional, incomplete 1st party games that require a download to start. 😕 Unless by "Nintendo" you meant third party releases like LA Noire and GTA.

@EVIL-C yeah sorry I meant some of the third party games on the nintendo switch, Nintendo themselves are quite good at making the most of the space they have

Aaaand I've cancelled my preorder. I'm glad this came out before it shipped.

@John117 Yeah, not a pollution issue when servers are known to cause it themselves.
And if you argue clean energy is the answer, I'd argue for recycling.
Don't force your preferences on others

You were always going to have to update the game for features like co op & forge anyway would've rather them just delayed it till it was really finished but of course alot of gamers are impatient & they've gotta get those holiday sales

@UltimateOtaku91 No problem. 🙂 I know we all often use "Nintendo" interchangeably.

@Dezzy70 if I had to guess why the pre load still isn't live I'd say it's probably because they're continually working on the game right up until release & they don't want people to download the pre load just to then have another big day one update to download

Seems safe to assume I won't be playing Infinite on Wednesday then (Thursday instead). I had suspicions that there'd be a gigantic update at precise launch date for the base game instead of being able to preload the campaign.

@EVIL-C There is 1 exception regarding Nintendo, the recent Pokemon remakes.

Game should be on the disc at least in a playable state. Every company makes mistakes and it's OK to call them out on things as hopefully it improves things for all gamers moving forward

Campaign was about 26gb when I looked on preload for GamePass and they couldn't fit that on the disc? Even with a day 1 patch there is no excuse.

Poor from Xbox but not unexpected, honestly don't know why they bother with discs if they are gonna half ass it.

Sounds like a job for..........LIMITED RUN GAMES! XD

Technically this is a GaaS release where the campaign isn't complete at launch and will be added to later. The coop feature will be added later, etc. etc. I'm not sure on-disc was ever going to be a thing for this game, since it's been billed as a service game from the start.

OTOH it still indicates the whole rushed release nature of this product. It feels like they were still gluing it together as they sent it out the door.

@Tharsman Even Nintendo's abandoned that as they pursue a weird GaaS model. Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, ACNH, Splatoon (obviously), Calamity Warriors, Arms, Mario Party, all of them missed much of the key content on cart. And several of the last few Pokemons had game breaking save-breaking bugs on cart. Unfortunately digital backups are definitely the only real preservation there is now...

@Bruvas Everybody knows the best method of emulsion for their older titles:

@John117
Ok thank you, but heard that doesn’t work for campaign downloading onto series x console.
I’m not sure they have released it yet to pre download.
I have multiplayer up and running ok.

@Grumblevolcano
Welll I guess I won’t be playing until Friday if we can’t download campaign until Wednesday 6pm UK time.
Bit of a let down considering it’s the biggest game of this year for Xbox and probably all consoles.

@BeautyandtheBeer That isn't the campaign but rather the already released multiplayer. Halo Infinite (Campaign) contains the multiplayer and a DLC file for the campaign. Currently the DLC file is 0 bytes.

Would we really want to preserve a version that shipped weeks in advance and technically wasn’t the Day One version anyway? Discs are not going to last forever. Surely someone with a big brain can come up with an infallible digital preservation technique. What discs ARE good for is finding cheaper versions at retailers, lending to friends and trading in.

This is unfortunately an issue that is far wider than Halo Infinite on Xbox. A lot of games don't come close to including the full game on the disc but do on PS5. I'm not trying to start anything. I'm just stating a fact after a year with both consoles. I've been able to install full versions of games (minus a day 1 patch) on the PS5, but some games on my Series X require a much larger download than they should.

Part of the problem is Smart Delivery, as good as the feature is for the most part. Sometimes only one version of the game is on the disc, or a little of both, and it just creates a mess in some ways for installing games from disc. They should have put the Series X versions of games on the disc and had the Xbox One version pretty much digitally, but even then I have my doubts this wouldn't be an issue still. Also, having to stick with Blu-rays because of Smart Delivery means they can't use UHDs, which hold more than a regular Blu-ray.

The other problem is one I've brought up before that the compression used isn't as good as what Sony came up with for the PS5. If a game is larger than 50 GB, no matter if Smart Delivery is involved or not, it wouldn't fit on the disc. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if the games were compressed better like they are mostly on PS5. Just using it as a recent example, but Skyrim is under 20 GB, while it is much bigger on the Series X. In other words, I don't know the install size, but it's entirely possible it never would have completely fit on the disc anyways if it's 50 GB or larger.

@EVIL-C @Grumblevolcano More than one exception, many Nintendo games needed patches to avoid crashing. Skyward Sword even needed to download a dedicated Wii channel (from the eShop "WiiWare" that has been shut down) to fix the save data. Most of Nintendo's games have been patched on 3DS, Wii U and Switch, for adding stuff or for fixing bugs, some of them critical.

Welcome to yesterday. Geez get over it.

Looks like Pure Xbox have not reported the newest bulls**t with halo.

You can NOT go back and replay missions UNLESS you start a new game save.

This halo game has me less interested in playing it every day.

@Bruvas So you are saying Phil Spencer did not praise, wish for, and commend game preservation?

@PcTV After reading that reply may want think to on changing name to AoCTV. Just a thought.

@John117 Nothing quite like reducing a conversation to name-calling to show people how coherent your thoughts are.
Now, to your comment: That's... an overproduction issue. Not inherent to physical media itself.
You don't seem to know how servers work, and how hard and expensive they are to maintain (just look at how many are abandoned in favor of new things that come out).

@GuyinPA75 AoC? Age of Calamity? I don't get it haha

There was no physical version of Xbox One X games, the "patches" were the full game. I see Series X/S games as the same thing. On PS5 and Switch the discs and cartridges need additional downloads most of the times so that is, basically, the same. Physical games are not complete. Heck, not even Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a limited edition of a compilation of old games, was complete. It was patched to update the camera controls and add GameCube controller support.

@John117 https://i.makeagif.com/media/5-19-2017/QckfqT.gif

@GuyinPA75 Most games with the same style of world as Infinite (e.g. RPGs) also locks replaying story missions/quests behind starting a new save file so it isn't that surprising. Post-launch will likely add a New Game + feature that allows you to replay the campaign with all your upgraded equipment.

Such a shame games are in this state. There's already games we've lost, and it's just going to get worse and worse as publishers don't have any incentive to preserve their games, or even if they do they can be prevented legally from doing so.

I've got a big collection (over 1000 titles) of movies and TV shows on physical media, but only half a dozen games as discs these days are just shiny download codes. Even if there is a game on there there's a day 1 patch to make it actually playable.

@John117 today's article has proven you wrong about pre installing.