Halo Infinite Dev: 'None Of Us Inside Of 343 Look At This Roadmap And Are Happy With It'

How much more evidence is needed for Microsoft to see 343 is incredibly, poorly run that is flooded with incompetence? Really think most of it is that Kiki wolfkill and Bonnie Ross. I could be wrong though. Just get huge sense of arrogance from majority of the management.

At least you have to appreciate their honesty and perhaps better to deliver what you expect to be achievable, even if somewhat underwhelming than over-promise and then fail to deliver...

I'm always for honesty. Sugar-coated statements never help anyone and just usually end up making someone sound like a robot. He was simply admitting there is certainly room for improvement and hopefully they can figure out the development process to get to shorter seasons in the future.

Still pumped to jump back in come May!

Honesty is great and all, but means little if no actual change happens. 343 and Microsoft made this game a hot mess through their prioritizing F2P business models and skins over the fundamental features that previous games in the franchise managed to include from Day One. And the entire concept of Seasons and "Games as Service" is just industry speak for laziness and unfinished and/or glitchy games being launched and then having basic features added in bits and pieces over time...if at all.

That illustrates that they need a project manager to keep the teams on track.

@GuyinPA75 Kiki Wolfkill manages transmedia (Shows,Books) and honestly after Episode 5 and 6 of the show I believe she is doing fine. Bonnie Ross, well that is more on point criticism. But ultimately I think the issues start a little further down the management pipe with names we don't necessarily know.

@BrilliantBill
All Microsoft need to do is send someone in to Micro Manage them through the process and also hopefully 343 will learn from that.
Game development is probably not that easy but if you have good management that can manage the process it should be all good.
Who’s the person in charge of studio game development at Xbox, perhaps they should get of their arse and do some micro managing, that’s if they know how to.

@GuyinPA75 I kinda felt that way with the guy in the stream with the long hair and hat. When Joseph Staten was joking of his huge sweater and having fun, hat dude visibly groaned and had no smile. And it just felt... Not good.

Hey, MS said they wanted this game to last a while. I doubt anyone assumed this is what they meant, though.

Looks to me it was released way too early. Maybe in another year the game will be playable.

@iplaygamesnstuff It's very playable right now. The issue is committing to a "live service" when they clearly aren't ready for it.

@Kezelpaso I guess playable was a poor choice of words. It is unplayable to me because the game is not ready and does not meet basic expectations.

@BrilliantBill Yep I'm familiar with wolfkill's duties. This is why definitely included her in there. She said on major Nelson's podcast she was on set every day for halo show. Granted I only watched first episode. But was incredibly turned off by the wokeness. Changing both Keyes characters for sake of woke turned me off completely. Absolutely was no need to do that. One best characters in halo is Sarge and he is African American. Every time Sarge was in the game I loved him!

I'm soooooooooo very tired of having woke forced down my throat just for sake of woke. Truly believe that is leading to lot of the Netflix subscriber loss. Was my reason.

@Kezelpaso @iplaygamesnstuff unfortunately this is incorrect. The game is full of issues. Desync, one of the largest ones, has been present since near launch with no fix in sight.

A brief run down of just a few, current, known, bugs: Player camera sticking to spawn camera the entire match. Challenges not tracking. Reliably high ping matches. Desync galore. Randomly falling through the map. Menu options like disabling speed lines not working. In game voice chat only working intermittently. Constant UI glitches with elements not loading both in menu and in game.

This is just on Series X. Series S has more issues. PC even more. On PC you can barely play the game for an hour without a hard crash or a memory leak grinding everything to a halt.

@Kezelpaso But wait. Forge was released with the.... Oh. But wait. Co op says released with the.... Oh. But wait. The game was fully functional when released.... Oh. Big Team Battle worked when released.... Oh. The game was completely, totally, definitely, ready for release when shown at E3.... Oh.

Yep. Think that sums up just little bit of the numerous issues with 343. I'm willing bet almost everyone in 343 management needs be held accountable and shown the door.

@Dezzy70 MS micromanaging 343i is the issue.

Bonnie Ross, corporate vice president of MS, 343i head, was the one tasked with setting up and running 343i, and has done so from the perspective of an executive. She has major sway in MS, and complete control in 343i.

343 are not up to the task. I appreciate the honesty but why is Halo in this state after 6/7 years and $200 million plus of a budget? They delivered an enjoyable yet pretty barebones single player game with no iconic co-op an have completely missed the mark with free to play multiplayer. I think major changes are needed within 343 especially at the top. Someone high up within MS gaming division must be asking questions.

@Richnj
That’s interesting to know and makes me feel maybe sort of worse about the whole 343 situation.
Maybe there is an issue with that then.
Can’t judge to much as I’m not there to see what is actually going on management wise.
So you know I’m an Operation Project Manager in the Aerospace industry.
That’s why I get all micro management, project mile stones etc on this site.

Are they trying to avoid crunch or are they just not prepared for live service? Maybe they need to enlist some outside hell from a dev who is experienced in live service games.

Wow. I'm glad he's being honest, but...wow.

As far as I'm concerned the game hasn't even launched yet, I'm waiting for it to launch someday.

@Dezzy70 Well I'm all for MS setting solid targets for 343i to aim towards, but my personal assumption is that 343i have zero creative freedom, and Bonnie being Corporate, has zero creative vision. She's leading them based on what is statistically popular and profitable, and not what is creatively exciting or cohesive, and when a trend changes, she shifts direction for the games. That's why the studio has been chasing trends, development has been unfocused, and creatives have been leaving. It's a poor creative culture.

I'd argue, it's why Joseph has been brought in. He has both leadership and creative vision.

As a Microsoft outsider these days, the recent negativity around this title is interesting to me.

https://www.purexbox.com/reviews/xbox-series-x/halo-infinite

What happened to Halo being a triumph? The Breath of the Wild of Halo games with solid single-player content and "incredible multiplayer action!" I think it even won the Player's Voice award at TGA last year.

Now I'm hearing the game is unplayable, unfinished, and barebones.

I mean... even if the content updates are a little disappointing, isn't the base experience supposedly satisfying?

I believe 343 is taking the same time working on HI as 343 guilty spark did waiting for a reclaimer to arrive on the ring.

343 releases roadmap and to cut off the fervor and the likes, from the crowd, they "admit" they're not happy with it. Y'all released it and the content within. No one to blame but themselves.

We have had our fair share of rushed horrid games. When a dev says we need more time, we tend to listen, especially nowadays. The fact they've been so mum on the topic and now are saying this, shows the lack of faith in themselves.

@Ralizah The hype and the honeymoon phase wore off.

343’s Halo games have been all over the place. The studio hasn’t been able to maintain the flair and sensibilities of the Bungie era games. I played Infinite for a number of hours and bounced.

@Ralizah I think the hype has died down and people have changed their minds.

I think season 2 is a step in the right direction. The free track in the BP is incredibly generous for a BP. Definitely meant to bring people back in.

I doubt it'll work though. Unless Last Spartan Standing and the new modes get some great press.

@Ralizah I enjoyed the gameplay, it felt great, and campaign overall. By barebones I mean it was just one biome, everything looked the same, every indoor linear level seemed copy and pasted from the last. It just kind of came and went.

I still maintain that overall I enjoyed the game, but it’s Halo, it should have been incredible and without co op there was no replayability for me personally. Something I’ve loved about previous games.

well when the makers are saying it's a turd sandwich and they don't even like what they did we got problems.....I'm getting ready to swap out my Halo infinite 10 foot poster with something else... Halo infinite went from blowing my socks off to putting me asleep so fast

@InterceptorAlpha You must be super unlucky. I am playing on Series X and have not experienced any of the mentioned "issues".

@punkoutlaw I'm not unlucky at all. These are all issues previously acknowledged my 343 that have yet to be fixed. The issues persist on both of my Series Xs, so it isn't a hardware issue either.

Concerning my network, as that's always the next place people like to go, 1gig symmetrical with Infinite being the only game I have issues like this on.

These issues are reported all over Halo's Facebook page, Twitter, Reddit, and even Waypoint itself.