343 Isn't Ready To Share An Update On Halo Infinite's Co-Op And Forge Mode Just Yet

Rough.... I do appreciate the man's honesty though.

I’m still having loads of fun with it. I can wait.

Oof how 'bout the season pass? Been having a great time on multiplayer, but the progress (or lack thereof) is downright depressing

Finished campaign already.

Kind of wish the Dolby Vision implementation had been fixed prior to me finish the only part I cared about.

Great game, by the way!

I have thoroughly enjoyed the campaign. But, I have to say no co-op and no ability to replay missions in a game changes this game from a 9 or 10 out of 10 to a 7 or 8 out of 10 for me. I am disappointed that 343 sees the campaign as a lower priority then new priorities on MP.

Still blown away by the idea they thought they were ready to launch the year before last.

The experience has been downright awful with games constantly ruined by persistent desync issues.

Challenges don't track properly, which is an issue for a challenge based game.

Like playing FFA? Sorry. Pretty much nothing counts ever.

Like playing BTB? Sorry. We pushed out a patch that broke it. Then pushed out another patch that was supposed to fix it and broke it worse.

And that ignoring the removal of basic thing like staying in game with lobby, missing Forge, coop, and Infection.

I can see why they went free to play with the multiplayer though. They needed to get it out the door even though it still needed a other year of work. No way would they have gotten away with selling it as the mess that it still is. So they dropped multiplayer for free after having use do an open "beta" to see if the current game flow was close enough. Then tried to get what few of the missed $60 sales by selling the campaign.

Halo has always been one of my top game series. But I just hate how 343 has handled it.

Rubbish that it didn’t launch with co-op but now it’s a case of just waiting until it’s ready.

Really enjoying playing through halo infinite at the moment but it still blows my mind that the game spent so long in development and had a YEAR delay…yet still didn’t have co-op, ray tracing, forge etc ready in time. Still has a broken multiplayer.

This is my big concern with MS just buying everybody…they’ve yet to show they’re able to properly manage the studios they own. This is why last gen was such a ***** show with so many games getting cancelled or delayed. Ms have how many studios now? And put out 3 games so far? 1 they had very little hand in (psychonaughts), 1 came out following a proven blueprint (Forza horizon), and one came out broken and missing features (halo)…
Everyone talks about how ‘crunch’ is bad…but I often get the impression Xbox should rule with a bit more of an iron fist to ensure things actually get done.

@Bleachedsmiles I do have to agree with you because I get the impression that Microsoft gives their studios too much freedom to the point that very little gets done. But it could also be that a lot of the games that are on their way were announced way too early. I remember people complaining a few years ago about an Xbox showcase where Microsoft only showed CGI trailers with no gameplay whatsoever. It could be that the games were still early in the development and Microsoft shouldn't have announced them. But they needed to put out those trailers to attract more people to come work for those studios. So I don't know, but it does feel like with 343 at least that they should've been more disciplined.

They can take their time. I've had a blast with the game thus far. My only real issues I can think of would be that the bosses felt too similar to each other in the campaign and I do wish there were more maps but overall 343 nailed it in my opinion. Bring on the co-op when it's ready.

"Hey guys, 343 here, remember that delay on completing the game we delayed by a hear? It looks like we may have to delay it. But we're delaying that announcement we committed to to tell you about it so we can tell you something that we might not have to delay!"

So how are we feeling about Halo Infinite campaign as the big Holiday 2022 release? Or Q1 2023?

@LtSarge @Bleachedsmiles FWIW, the only insight into mismanagement we have is 343, which we already knew is wholly incompetent. We really haven't seen any other studio show similar lack of competence. Ok, modern Rare with Everwild, the game that even they didn't know what it is. But they at least did that while also running a live service game that's well regarded after it's launch blunders, which is more than we can say for Crystal Dynamics' attempt. Playground may have rehashed FH4 for FH5, but they managed to make it in record time, and FH4 itself was quite a showcase, so it doesn't scream of mismanagement. Ok, Crackdown 3 happened, but that wasn't actually an MS studio, that was Sumo, and the game itself was conceived in the Matrick era as a "power of the cloud" showcase, and then they built a game around it. Scalebound was cancelled, but, that's just it, it was cancelled, which sounds like strong management over it. AoE4 allegedly came out great (I haven't played it.)

I think it'll be years before we really know what MS' track record is, so far we have limited history because they've had limited studios. But I think all we really know for sure is 'yep, 343i still sucks." I still compare them to Game Freak. You know they'll take something good and make it something mediocre, then it'll be celebrated by critics and gobbled up by fans.

@InterceptorAlpha The good news is Sony bought the real Bungie. The bad news is half of anyone that made Halo great already left Bungie, and current Bungie might just be even more incompetent than 343i.... Staten's probably the most important figure from Early Halo at this point and he's the one at 343 telling us they're delaying promised announcements of updates to delayed features of a delayed game.

BTB is still broken.

Also there's no choice to play in specific region servers. You're literally forced into North American and South American servers whether you like it or not with 150+ ping.

Basically might as well accept your loss with 5x latency.

@NEStalgia mate we had a whole generation just gone of examples of ms mismanagement. You list a few of them…scalebound cancelled, crackdown 3 countless delays and empty promises. There was also a fable game that go cancelled. Some others…I mean MS went a whole generation without hardly releasing any games. To the point people seriously questioned if they wanted to be in the hardware business.
This new gen so far we’ve had reveals for games that are still years away. One apparently cancelled game that was revealed when Rare didn’t even know what their gameplay loop was. Studios losing leads. And their biggest title not releasing with the console as it had to be delayed a whole year and still isn’t finished.
If that’s not examples of mismanagement I don’t know what to tell you.

Xbox are making all the right moves. And buying publishers who are more on the ball can only help them. But there’s still a serious management problem at Xbox.

@LtSarge yeah revealing things far too soon has been and continues to be a trap Xbox fall into. It’s either down to them basically having nothing ready to show…or thinking things are further in development than they actually are. If it’s the latter then again it shows they’re really not on the ball when it comes to over seeing games in development. If they couldn’t do it with a handful of studios why are we suddenly confident they can with so many more studios under them now?

@Bleachedsmiles X1 is a whole different kettle of fish. That was Matrick's personal mismanagement that closed down most of the company. It was a weird era where it's not that MS didn't want to be in hardware, it's that MS didn't want to be in software, and Matrick openly said he didn't believe in exclusives, etc. He closed most of their studios down completely. So...yeah, I mean I don't disagree, but that was a whole different problem with a whole different source of the problem than just mismanaging studios, that was a leader committed to demolishing the studios on purpose that failed horribly and was kicked to the curb.

"Current" Microsoft really didn't go into business until 2018-ish from a production standpoint. And most of their studios were acquired after that date and already working on existing multiplat commitments. We can't use the Matrick decisions as a benchmark for what they're currently doing since it really has nothing to do with any of the current studios or how they're managed other than 343, Turn10, Rare, and The Coalition. Even Playground wasn't owned by MS at the time. 343 we know is a mess. Turn 10 hasn't released in a while, but has been doing engine work for what Playground has been doing. Rare seems like a mess with Everwild but they get some leeway since they're running MS's biggest GaaS other than halo, and Coalition has been doing well.

Judging current MS process by 2017 and prior process would be like judging THQ-Nordic (Embracer) by how the "real" THQ ran things. The only mismanagement we have evidence of with the current MS/XGS studio program is 343. But that's not new, they were a mess of a studio since they were founded to be a Bungie stand-in (Then Bungie got ripped apart, ironically, by Activisions' demands.)

Edit: You're right about their loose management btw, there's no way they should not have been aware of how bad a shape Halo was in, at least. But, they HAVE been showing things early because they HAVE to. They acquired studios mostly from 2018-2020. Modern AAA games take 3-6 years to make. Most of those studios they bought were releasing multiplats still from 2019-2021, meaning it's 3-6 years before their new games for Microsoft can even release from that time. MS really had the choice of showing stuff early to build hype or wait until next-next-gen hype is building to start announcing games. That wasn't going to fly.

It's the same strategy Sony used in the Year of Dreams stadium E3 show. They had that big blowout event but what they showed then consisted of what most of the PS4's lifespan would cover, up through FF7R and Death Stranding that didn't release until the last year of the generation. They built the brand and hype for PS4 at the start by showing a future that was mostly going to happen throughout the gen up to the end. Nintendo did it with WiiU (E3 year one showed the games they launched when we were all ready to place "NX" preorders. And MS is doing it now.

It's not the ideal strategy, but it's not exactly new in the business.

Naw. The game launched. I already played, set it down, walked away. I'm not returning to this broken piece of garbage mess.