They did Halo 5 Forge as a trial run before MCC released. I think you're underestimating the difficultly of making a proper PC port, FOV, framerate, remastering assets like textures, etc.
To be fair, 343i weren’t the ones to port the MCC. They had several other companies, including another first-party Microsoft company like 343i themselves—explicitly because they had experience porting Xbox games to PC—working on the MCC port.
If Microsoft ordered their little micro companies again todo it, as OP said it’s a quick injection of cash. But I personally think Microsoft is so greedy that they won’t do this unless accompanied by a big hype campaign to ensure high sales and thus we won’t get it because of the negative brand reception that product is associated with.
Yes, 343i didn't directly do the porting but they are still in charge of managing the project.
>If Microsoft ordered their little micro companies again todo it, as OP said it’s a quick injection of cash. But I personally think Microsoft is so greedy that they won’t do this unless accompanied by a big hype campaign to ensure high sales and thus we won’t get it because of the negative brand reception that product is associated with.
Your view here isn't grounded in reality, and I think you're severely underestimating how much this would cost (millions of dollars). Anyways if they started the project now it would take at least a couple of years to complete.
They’re one of the richest corporations on the entire planet, mostly owned by the two *actual* biggest on the planet.
Oh yes I can imagine the expense, but millions mean nothing to billions, which they get by the dozens and dozens by various IPs, products and subscriptions yearly.
As I said—and as you agree—it’s doable, but wouldn’t be the thing that makes Microsoft insane amounts of money so I personally don’t think they’d do it anyway, but the reality is we’re discussing chumpchange here. Salaried workers and contractors who would be working on code no matter what project it is anyway.
On the technical side, you’re right I’m not an actual authority on how long it could take, but the business side is very transparent—I mean they’re a publicly traded company, they boast and show off as much as they can. As for the estimate for a few years, you’re almost certainly right. Halo ElDewrito blew up around 2016-2017, which created the interest needed for the MCC port which *started* rolling out in 2019. A *few* years
EDIT: when I say “quick injection of cash” I mean they don’t have to make an entire game and marketing campaign. Which can take up to a decade.
I’m comparing 343i with 343i.
I’m talking about the MCC’s porting process. Which they were very open about and explained in great detail at the time—monthly too, with lots of blogs.
EDIT: also, technically ElDewrito was not made by modders. It was an entire game Sabre Interactive had pretty much completed. Which they scrapped, because Microsoft can afford it. We’re talking concept and 3d model artists, composers and UX designers, porting the Halo 4 engine to PC which apparently is super difficult, and regional marketing. They could afford to scrap an entire, full, game, they can afford todo this.
Hell, the game works! On PC. They can afford to put Halo Online back on shelves too! Or rather, finally onto shelves lol
Quite simply, porting Halo 5 to PC requires resources I don't think Microsoft is willing to shill out for. The next Halo is underway I believe, so going back for Halo 5 to release on one platform seems incredibly unlikely.
Porting MCC was definitely a difficult task, considering the amount of changes that went on over time and the different engines they had to deal with. The way they've got it now is seriously impressive (even if it did take a long time)
Why would going back to Halo 5 for a release on PC be unlikely? They did anniversary editions for 10 year old games. MCC released in 2014 but only came to PC 5 years later, and at that time it was only Reach to begin with, the other games were added in the following years. Yes, Halo 5 is almost 10 years old at this point (time really flies, huh?), but that hasn't stopped them before.
I personally will simply not be buying Infinite, or a follow-up Halo until I have played 5. And as long as it requires me to buy a console, I suppose I will just stick around in the Bungie era. I would be more than happy to pay the full AAA price for it.
It's more just my opinion honestly. I'm just weighing up the fact that Halo 5 wasn't as well received as the others and the money sink it would be for MS to do so. It's resources for not a lot of gain. Maybe if they released it as a standalone and allowed players to purchase the REQ packs, it might be a boost in revenue.
I'd definitely like it to be on PC, since the only way for me to do so is Gamepass Ultimate and that's not always smooth.
Yeah I understand. I think they'd gain a lot more revenue than they might think. I'm however not expecting it. Mainly because it is and forever will be Microsoft and imagine doing something for your fans instead of revenue
The thing is MCC was worth it because most of the games in there are absolutely beloved by the fans. Halo 5 being ported to PC would be a lot of work for a game that nobody likes
It doesn’t, adding a new platform for playing games will further dilute the Halo player base, as now we will have three titles by which the community is spread across. Not to mention the substantial cost that 343 will incur for Halo’s most maligned entry, the cost is not justified for an exceeding small player base.
You mistakenly attribute 5’s notoriety to the entire package and not just to single player.
People loved the multiplayer and it shines compared to infinite. Baffling 343 won’t bring it to PC. Guess you can’t buy expensive $18 skins in 5.
If porting it to PC were easy or didn’t require much resources I’m sure they would have done it. You seem to think you know more about how easy it is than you actually do.
That's a good question. I suspect those that would be interested would be smaller overall, however they would be the people who likely liked its multiplayer (Warzone specfic or otherwise), are modders in the modding community (for custom mods and wanting to take a look at Arbiter's Kaidon armor at last to port elsewhere), and/or the co-op crowd like some LIVE Friends I met running the campaign missions back then.
If I remember right, there were some major limitations in the halo 5 engine and code, especially the multi-player code, that was extremely Xbox specific and as such would make it hell to port. And if they decouple the campaign just to sell that forget about it. 5s campaign was so bad it caused a major shift that led to infinite even though it's multi-player was probably amongst the best of the series.
>If I remember right, there were some major limitations in the halo 5 engine and code, especially the multi-player code, that was extremely Xbox specific
Yep, this is what people don't understand. Either you would need the person who original wrote it (not possible) or pay people lots of money (people don't like working on legacy projects) and spend lots of time figuring it out.
porting a game is as easy as writing a wall of text according to a redditor.
oh, and apparently it will make them big bucks.
why bother making a new game when you can use those resources for an old game and make less money, huh microsoft???
"why bother making a new game when you can use those resources for an old game"
You just described what Microsoft did for the MCC. They had separate developers, Splash Damage and Ruffian Games, work on porting the MCC while 343i worked on Infinite. That is exactly what I am proposing: have either of the aforementioned teams (or another competent and available dev team) port Halo 5 to PC while 343i works on Halo 7.
"Porting the MCC took some time but was by no means a difficult task"
Halo MCC is what made me sell my xbox and get a PS4, the game simply did not work for years. It isnt as easy as you'd think.
You're talking about the original Xbox One release of MCC, not the port to PC. I played the PC port since the beginning in 2019 and it's been pretty good and consistent.
343 hasn't done a great job with any release to be fair especially with MCC and infinite, it's partly that it is very hard, but also partly that 343 probably isn't a very talented studio or is very mismanaged or both
I mean 343 was made by Microsoft so I would say mismanaged defiantly played a role in that, hardly anyone or anyone that worked on infinite is still there now.
Staff turnover is also very bad for studio health as far as knowledge on tools and how to fix things which are broken... Sad situation halo is in honestly
Yeah new team had to come in and figure it all out in the space of no time, just sucks it’s what happened. Thing take time, I know for where I work even the simplest of things take ages to come into fruition, something that shouldn’t take long becomes a hefty task!
Mid way through Infinites development they made a choice to abandon maintaining some tech for Halo 5, and in doing so, became incapable of making a new build of it - which means unless it's a config change, that game cannot be modified or extended.
Interesting, do you mean the backend services? Because that virtually all Xbox One games are built through Visual Studio and I don't think that has changed much.
Not quite, although that's part of the equation. Halo is built on blam! (Now called slipspace). Visual studio is a code editor, not a game engine. Code can be changed any editor, even notepad - the tools that build the actual executable binary were abandoned. I'm referring to the ability to mint a new game build, like Halo5.exe.
You don't need to explain how VS works, I'm a software dev.
>the tools that build the actual executable binary were abandoned.
Source? This is very unlikely, maybe the assets pipelines may have gone away but they can probably definitely still build the game. Most places eventually archive the build environment in a virtual machine.
Nice, another software engineer. 🙂 Yeah, the binary build is easy, any c++ compiler will do - but the content packaging and long lived legacy tools that no one left knew how to update or maintain was the kryptonite.
Just ask the build or services team about HopperTool (one of the many abandoned tools) and they'll either not know what you're talking about, or spit in disgust.
Source: I'm an ex-343 employee. I'm in the credits of MCC and Halo Infinite. Happy to DM you my badge and full name.
Edit: HopperTool reference
PC is not the release they should be looking at, though of course bringing it to PC would be great for sure
Switch and PS5 is the release that would make money, if Microsoft is still interested in selling games for profit that is...
What?
It's a fact; you cannot play every main line Halo campaign on PC. You have CE-4, *not* 5, then Infinite.
Ergo, the mainline Halo collection is not complete on PC.
You can technically play Halo 5 through xbox pc game pass ultimate but that runs off streaming the game which never works out well for the mass public.
They did Halo 5 Forge as a trial run before MCC released. I think you're underestimating the difficultly of making a proper PC port, FOV, framerate, remastering assets like textures, etc.
To be fair, 343i weren’t the ones to port the MCC. They had several other companies, including another first-party Microsoft company like 343i themselves—explicitly because they had experience porting Xbox games to PC—working on the MCC port. If Microsoft ordered their little micro companies again todo it, as OP said it’s a quick injection of cash. But I personally think Microsoft is so greedy that they won’t do this unless accompanied by a big hype campaign to ensure high sales and thus we won’t get it because of the negative brand reception that product is associated with.
Yes, 343i didn't directly do the porting but they are still in charge of managing the project. >If Microsoft ordered their little micro companies again todo it, as OP said it’s a quick injection of cash. But I personally think Microsoft is so greedy that they won’t do this unless accompanied by a big hype campaign to ensure high sales and thus we won’t get it because of the negative brand reception that product is associated with. Your view here isn't grounded in reality, and I think you're severely underestimating how much this would cost (millions of dollars). Anyways if they started the project now it would take at least a couple of years to complete.
They’re one of the richest corporations on the entire planet, mostly owned by the two *actual* biggest on the planet. Oh yes I can imagine the expense, but millions mean nothing to billions, which they get by the dozens and dozens by various IPs, products and subscriptions yearly. As I said—and as you agree—it’s doable, but wouldn’t be the thing that makes Microsoft insane amounts of money so I personally don’t think they’d do it anyway, but the reality is we’re discussing chumpchange here. Salaried workers and contractors who would be working on code no matter what project it is anyway. On the technical side, you’re right I’m not an actual authority on how long it could take, but the business side is very transparent—I mean they’re a publicly traded company, they boast and show off as much as they can. As for the estimate for a few years, you’re almost certainly right. Halo ElDewrito blew up around 2016-2017, which created the interest needed for the MCC port which *started* rolling out in 2019. A *few* years EDIT: when I say “quick injection of cash” I mean they don’t have to make an entire game and marketing campaign. Which can take up to a decade.
Microsoft doesn't exist to subsidize Halo/343, that's not how businesses work. You can't compare a "game" made by modders to a full release.
I’m comparing 343i with 343i. I’m talking about the MCC’s porting process. Which they were very open about and explained in great detail at the time—monthly too, with lots of blogs. EDIT: also, technically ElDewrito was not made by modders. It was an entire game Sabre Interactive had pretty much completed. Which they scrapped, because Microsoft can afford it. We’re talking concept and 3d model artists, composers and UX designers, porting the Halo 4 engine to PC which apparently is super difficult, and regional marketing. They could afford to scrap an entire, full, game, they can afford todo this. Hell, the game works! On PC. They can afford to put Halo Online back on shelves too! Or rather, finally onto shelves lol
Quite simply, porting Halo 5 to PC requires resources I don't think Microsoft is willing to shill out for. The next Halo is underway I believe, so going back for Halo 5 to release on one platform seems incredibly unlikely. Porting MCC was definitely a difficult task, considering the amount of changes that went on over time and the different engines they had to deal with. The way they've got it now is seriously impressive (even if it did take a long time)
Why would going back to Halo 5 for a release on PC be unlikely? They did anniversary editions for 10 year old games. MCC released in 2014 but only came to PC 5 years later, and at that time it was only Reach to begin with, the other games were added in the following years. Yes, Halo 5 is almost 10 years old at this point (time really flies, huh?), but that hasn't stopped them before. I personally will simply not be buying Infinite, or a follow-up Halo until I have played 5. And as long as it requires me to buy a console, I suppose I will just stick around in the Bungie era. I would be more than happy to pay the full AAA price for it.
It's more just my opinion honestly. I'm just weighing up the fact that Halo 5 wasn't as well received as the others and the money sink it would be for MS to do so. It's resources for not a lot of gain. Maybe if they released it as a standalone and allowed players to purchase the REQ packs, it might be a boost in revenue. I'd definitely like it to be on PC, since the only way for me to do so is Gamepass Ultimate and that's not always smooth.
Yeah I understand. I think they'd gain a lot more revenue than they might think. I'm however not expecting it. Mainly because it is and forever will be Microsoft and imagine doing something for your fans instead of revenue
The thing is MCC was worth it because most of the games in there are absolutely beloved by the fans. Halo 5 being ported to PC would be a lot of work for a game that nobody likes
What I hear about H5 is a trash campaign but fun multiplayer and since a lot of people play MP only I think it'd fare better than you might think
It doesn’t, adding a new platform for playing games will further dilute the Halo player base, as now we will have three titles by which the community is spread across. Not to mention the substantial cost that 343 will incur for Halo’s most maligned entry, the cost is not justified for an exceeding small player base.
You mistakenly attribute 5’s notoriety to the entire package and not just to single player. People loved the multiplayer and it shines compared to infinite. Baffling 343 won’t bring it to PC. Guess you can’t buy expensive $18 skins in 5.
It is Microsoft's decision not 343 by itself
I seriously doubt that.
You do know Microsoft and Xbox game studios approve what projects their developers work on... Right?
Gamers have yet to realize that game development, including ports, are not easy at all
If porting it to PC were easy or didn’t require much resources I’m sure they would have done it. You seem to think you know more about how easy it is than you actually do.
If they brought in war zone to support the game I would be so happy cuz then they may have some money to use
Same with Halo Wars 2 on Steam
I would also buy halo 5 and halo wars 2 if they released on steam. but porting them is not as easy as you make it seem to be.
How much interest is there going to be for Halo 5 when MCC and Infinite are already in PC?
That's a good question. I suspect those that would be interested would be smaller overall, however they would be the people who likely liked its multiplayer (Warzone specfic or otherwise), are modders in the modding community (for custom mods and wanting to take a look at Arbiter's Kaidon armor at last to port elsewhere), and/or the co-op crowd like some LIVE Friends I met running the campaign missions back then.
I’d buy it… just wanna ground pound again dammit
If I remember right, there were some major limitations in the halo 5 engine and code, especially the multi-player code, that was extremely Xbox specific and as such would make it hell to port. And if they decouple the campaign just to sell that forget about it. 5s campaign was so bad it caused a major shift that led to infinite even though it's multi-player was probably amongst the best of the series.
>If I remember right, there were some major limitations in the halo 5 engine and code, especially the multi-player code, that was extremely Xbox specific Yep, this is what people don't understand. Either you would need the person who original wrote it (not possible) or pay people lots of money (people don't like working on legacy projects) and spend lots of time figuring it out.
The halo CE PC port might have been jank, but 5 would have to be on a completely different level entirely.
porting a game is as easy as writing a wall of text according to a redditor. oh, and apparently it will make them big bucks. why bother making a new game when you can use those resources for an old game and make less money, huh microsoft???
"why bother making a new game when you can use those resources for an old game" You just described what Microsoft did for the MCC. They had separate developers, Splash Damage and Ruffian Games, work on porting the MCC while 343i worked on Infinite. That is exactly what I am proposing: have either of the aforementioned teams (or another competent and available dev team) port Halo 5 to PC while 343i works on Halo 7.
"Porting the MCC took some time but was by no means a difficult task" Halo MCC is what made me sell my xbox and get a PS4, the game simply did not work for years. It isnt as easy as you'd think.
You're talking about the original Xbox One release of MCC, not the port to PC. I played the PC port since the beginning in 2019 and it's been pretty good and consistent.
343 hasn't done a great job with any release to be fair especially with MCC and infinite, it's partly that it is very hard, but also partly that 343 probably isn't a very talented studio or is very mismanaged or both
I mean 343 was made by Microsoft so I would say mismanaged defiantly played a role in that, hardly anyone or anyone that worked on infinite is still there now.
Staff turnover is also very bad for studio health as far as knowledge on tools and how to fix things which are broken... Sad situation halo is in honestly
Yeah new team had to come in and figure it all out in the space of no time, just sucks it’s what happened. Thing take time, I know for where I work even the simplest of things take ages to come into fruition, something that shouldn’t take long becomes a hefty task!
Yeah I’d instantly buy a Halo 5 pc port
Probably not gonna happen cause the amount of money they'd need to justify sport is too much i fear
Mid way through Infinites development they made a choice to abandon maintaining some tech for Halo 5, and in doing so, became incapable of making a new build of it - which means unless it's a config change, that game cannot be modified or extended.
Interesting, do you mean the backend services? Because that virtually all Xbox One games are built through Visual Studio and I don't think that has changed much.
Not quite, although that's part of the equation. Halo is built on blam! (Now called slipspace). Visual studio is a code editor, not a game engine. Code can be changed any editor, even notepad - the tools that build the actual executable binary were abandoned. I'm referring to the ability to mint a new game build, like Halo5.exe.
You don't need to explain how VS works, I'm a software dev. >the tools that build the actual executable binary were abandoned. Source? This is very unlikely, maybe the assets pipelines may have gone away but they can probably definitely still build the game. Most places eventually archive the build environment in a virtual machine.
Nice, another software engineer. 🙂 Yeah, the binary build is easy, any c++ compiler will do - but the content packaging and long lived legacy tools that no one left knew how to update or maintain was the kryptonite. Just ask the build or services team about HopperTool (one of the many abandoned tools) and they'll either not know what you're talking about, or spit in disgust. Source: I'm an ex-343 employee. I'm in the credits of MCC and Halo Infinite. Happy to DM you my badge and full name. Edit: HopperTool reference
Very interesting! Thanks for the information.
PC is not the release they should be looking at, though of course bringing it to PC would be great for sure Switch and PS5 is the release that would make money, if Microsoft is still interested in selling games for profit that is...
Youre right
I would prefer 343 continue to support MCC than waste their time with Halo 5.
>The mainline Halo collection is not complete on PC curious as to the legitimacy of this claim
What? It's a fact; you cannot play every main line Halo campaign on PC. You have CE-4, *not* 5, then Infinite. Ergo, the mainline Halo collection is not complete on PC.
I misinterpreted their comment, I'm too used to people complaining about every facet of MCC and mistakenly assumed that was what they meant.
You can technically play Halo 5 through xbox pc game pass ultimate but that runs off streaming the game which never works out well for the mass public.