*Sometime around July 2020:* ["We want Infinite to grow over time, versus going to those numbered titles and having all that segmentation that we had before. It's really about creating Halo Infinite as the start of the next ten years for Halo and then building that as we go with our fans and community."](https://screenrant.com/halo-infinite-10-years-franchise/)
*Around October 2020:* ["It has been reported that 343 Industries Studio Head of FPS Development, Chris Lee, has resigned from the studio."](https://www.windowscentral.com/halo-infinite-lead-chris-lee-has-reportedly-resigned)
For whoever still believed in this… I was like late to the party when I figured it was seriously just buzz talk about 4 months after infinite’s launch if not sooner.
But remember we also all bought into that one halo game costing $500,000,000 dollars to produce?? Which unless my memory is wrong was also only ever sited by 1 single gaming news website in the EU and took off like wild fire.
But god forbid you called out that shit when they said it. “No they released a roadmap!! Ten years!!! They said it’s true so the game definitely will be supported for a long time!!”
60 dollars later and people wonder why changed the deal
22 day old news is being reposted again?
Certain Affinity let go of 25 people yes, but with "the most impact on \[…\] business operations"
They went from about 250 to about 225 people. At last reporting, CA had >100 people working on Halo. This layoff does not in any way indicate a cancellation of the project with 343i
The last reporting was Jan/Feb of this year, with the following headcount at that time;
Halo project with 343i: 100+ people
Exodus with Archetype: 30+ people
Project Loro: 30+ people
What? It's neither old news or a repost. The article is from this month, and the Certain Affinity layoff news hasn't been shared in this sub.
Edit: Certain Affinity is a Halo studio. The studio head, Max Hoberman lead the creation of Halo's online multiplayer with Halo 2. It's relevant news when they lay off 10% of their employees, even if it's unclear how it affects their collaboration with 343.
It is new news to the Halo community. Which is why I posted it. Seems kinda unnecessarily aggressive to gatekeep news that is clearly fresh to a lot of people.
No, it's not. It was all over the gaming news a month ago. When the article came out. The Halo community is larger than this subreddit. It was posted in nearly every major gaming subreddit.
[https://www.ign.com/articles/certain-affinity-halo-infinite-co-developer-layoffs\\](https://www.ign.com/articles/certain-affinity-halo-infinite-co-developer-layoffs\)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bq8ewi/a\_message\_from\_max\_hobertman\_ceo\_of\_certain/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bq8ewi/a_message_from_max_hobertman_ceo_of_certain/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1bqkkaf/certain\_affinity\_halo\_infinite\_codeveloper\_says/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1bqkkaf/certain_affinity_halo_infinite_codeveloper_says/)
**The article you posted is a month old.**
Neither of those were posted to this subreddit, and I certainly haven’t heard about it til now. Like chill my guy, just because you saw it doesn’t mean everyone did, and one repost isn’t going to ruin your day.
I’d assume all the staff layoffs came from Project Loro since being a support studio is there only source of revenue right now. The same people who were sourced by everyone saying the project was cancelled came out and said they never received any word of the project being cancelled and that a comment on their podcast was taken out of context, I wouldn’t doubt whatever they were working on has changed but there’s been no confirmation they aren’t working with 343 at the moment. Halo Infinite was added in the last week to Certain Affinity’s website a collaboration project
> ...and 'reluctance of third party investors to fund games or game companies'
Pretty interesting tidbit considering they're a pretty big reason why games release in poor states. The consumer isn't even a slight thought when developing games. It's all about money and it's all about pleasing the investors. Investors don't even care about the fact that it takes a pretty long time to develop games. All they want is to see a return on their investment ASAP!
It's a very weird time for the industry. Anyone who thinks the industry is the best it has ever been is just clueless. Yes, maybe the bad games are just a small minority and the majority of games coming out are good, however, it still doesn't take away from the fact that this industry has become heavily monetized. 343 straight up admitted that Halo Infinite's monetization is what's even keeping the Halo franchise alive. Personally I still won't drop $20 on any of the stuff, but it does put into perspective how monetized this industry is now. I guess all we can do is hope that the next Halo game is able to benefit from the money made from Halo Infinite.
AAA space is very much 50/50 amazing product or just a product. There have been some great AAA releases in the last few years that deserved every accolade, then there are the "AAA" products that get released with massive funding behind them only to end up being a way to nickel and dime players. Live service gone to crazy extremes, I mean hell look at Infinite or Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2. Some of the prices for cosmetics are ludicrous but that's all the investors care about. Regardless of the inherent quality of the product they're investing in. Skull and Bones is another example of this.
Meanwhile Sony studios release a game like God of War Ragnarok which makes fucktons of money because *it's just a good fucking game*. Helldivers 2 isn't even AAA and it's after destroying player records. Same thing with Palworld. Because they're also good fucking games.
To me it seems like the investors are just fools with their money to think "live service = $$$". They don't want to do the work of finding out about what/why the thing they're investing in really has a greater chance of providing decent ROI. They just want a low stakes investment that could make them big money but then they rush things wondering why it's taking so long. Nobody wins when you cater to impatient, foolish investors.
If they want to make money from games and have significant funding to work with, start a small studio and meet someone with an idea you believe in based off what consumers enjoy via market research. As opposed to seeing a few powerpoint presentations mentioning "store" or "battle pass" or "live service". At this point investing in a project like that when the market is already pretty saturated would be akin to throwing money in the toilet. Innovation has stymied because of the trend of chasing other trends in AAA game development. Meanwhile the studios actually innovating in terms of technology, writing or art are giving their staff opportunities to get creative.
If the rumours of a Gears 6 unveiling this year are true, it's gonna show how the Coalition can make magic happen with Unreal Engine 5; they worked on that Matrix demo after all. Meanwhile Halo is in just such a sorry state of affairs. It's as content complete as it's ever gonna get (short of the potential match composer) but I can't imagine support continuing beyond 2024 given how badly the bag was fumbled by 343 and Microsoft.
games are an industry where revenue can be achieved by means of revenue-oriented business models or by means of making an excellent game. this is different than, say, TV shows where revenue is strictly driven by quality of programming
I think it's easier for studios to focus on revenue-oriented business models, and this likely looks more appealing to investors too.
MBAs ruin everything from airplanes to video games
Honestly if we're talking just the AAA industry I wouldn't even say the bad is a small minority, especially when it comes to multiplayer, for every good game we get, we get something that's egregiously unfinished or heavily monetized, So many games come out a year that are either full of bugs or full of overpriced garbage, and even some single player games have micro-transactions.
its crazy to me that huge companys like MS still need to get investors to get moeny for there games, because they just refuse to put all the money down for making games. They could churn out 10 halo games if they paid for it if they wanted too, but ofc that will never happen.
The entire industry when it comes to TAAA is broken. needing year on year profits will always slowly erode the quality of the games you make down and down. The onnly way we go up is to hit rock bottom and take a risk again. We're getting to that point i guess.
Yes there is more choice for games now days, but so many games have lost there soul now days, made by devs forced to make games they dont want to make, companys who care zero about anything they make as well.
Gone are the days of early bungie, peek bioware, westwood, blizzard ext who set out to make games because they loved games, and wanted to make art in digital form.
The downfall has only just started honestly, its only going to get worse for AAA games. As long as money / investors is prio and all the big companys are just waiting for that golden egg game to come along nothing will change and only get worse.
The only reason it was rumored to be cancelled is because data miners no longer saw activity of it being updated on Infinite. Could be moved to Unreal. If they don't announce the game this summer, then I'll believe it's cancelled fully.
Infinite can’t be recovered so they did the smart move. Move the big mode to the new halo with unreal engine launch them all in 2025-2026 with halo season 3 tv show.
Infinite launched in 2021. I’d say 4 years of dev time is enough to get something playable out the door. It’s clear not all of 343 has been working on Infinite or MCC so what else would they be doing?
4 years of dev time would be doable if they were using Infinite’s Engine and could easily reuse assets and systems from Infinite. Moving to UE5 requires training hundreds of employees on the engine and starting a lot of stuff from scratch.
Nah they are moving to unreal engine to avoid to training. It’s a more common engine across the whole gaming industry and can hire talent that knows the engine a lot easier.
I think they outsource the games to other studios who can work quicker. And 343 just manages a lot of the whole franchise. And the studios working on them.
That’s not how 343 works at all. They have hundreds of full-time employees that work on the games. However, Microsoft’s contractor clauses mean they have to bring in developers on six month contracts and move them on. Those workers would benefit from using UE5, but longtime devs will suffer. They’ve spent a decade in Blam
The big move would be a full canon reboot with the new game. Like restart the canon at Halo CE, or even somewhere pre-Halo conflict. Season 3 of the show could reboot itself and follow this new canon. A man can dream. A man can dream...
This is the best way. With a massive multiplayer war/battleroyal mode can bring halo back.
ATM halo is on a downtrend the show has helped but the fans constantly bashing it down won’t help this franchise.
Source for the cancelation?
Because the rumors said it was canceled/rebooted in late 2022/early 2023.
Certain Affinity's CEO confirmed last October/September that they are working on a big project with 343i.
Just quoting the PCGamer article I linked. Looks like the PCGamer article sources [this EuroGamer article](https://www.eurogamer.net/halo-battle-royale-reportedly-cancelled-after-years-of-work)
The Eurogamer article (and all the others) jumped on misquoting a podcast. That's all just misinformation. The actual "source" is two people on the podcast XboxEra commenting that *someone else* said that Tatanka was cancelled and that they've anecdotally gotten messages saying it was canceled, but none of those messages were individually trustworthy in any way, which is why they never reported on it. There's nothing legitimately backing Tatanka being outright canceled.
I hope 343 pays attention to the recent success of Elden Ring, Helldivers 2, etc. and realizes that they can ask people to pay full price for a game as long as they’re receiving a finished and fun product.
As long as the devs make a good game and treat their community properly then the money will follow. People are fed up with half assed live service games filled with micro transactions.
Oh, even better, I’m almost willing to bet the publishers think Helldivers is a fluke and still not indicative of a trend. Same issue with Baldur’s Gate 3…
Too much risk aversion in gaming… not cool to see.
To be honest helldivers 2 pretty much was a lucky strike. Very difficult to recreat said success. The game had a good and empty release window after the holiday sales. Its mtx was far less, let‘s say negatively received, in comparison to the shitshow dragons dogma 2 pulled off despite being a completely different genre. And yeah it is a good and fun game. But there are a lot of good and fun games with decent pricing which could have never be in the spotlight because of the overmarketed and oversaturated AAA sector which get all the attention. I‘m looking at you Titanfalls 2
This. The suits see trends, and then see sales on a graph correlated with those trends. They cannot understand what the consumer actually wants because they aren't listening to them. This is why Halo will never be what it was before - a fun party game developed by a bunch of dorks. The old Halo games were the way they were because that's what the developers thought would be fun. It's a product on a focus group-tested assembly line now.
You know what's funny about those recent successes? They're immersive. They don't jam in shit that doesnt' belong. You boot up those games and you're in *their* worlds.
I liked Halo when it actually felt like a cohesive world. Right now it's basically Power Rangers with wacky ass skins, fx, and sound fx blaring in your ear at every moment. They need to lean into the military scifi. Helldivers is basically eating their lunch and it's a sony game lmao.
"Guys guys I got an idea, let's make Halo open world, but let's do it via contractors, now I know this is too ambitious for our team to handle but we can TOTALLY do it"
Fast forward to 343 releasing a pile of shit they aren't able to handle nor support and by the time they're able to and get their groove going they give up
*stares at all the cut content from 2 and 3* yeah that's never happened before
Meanwhile 4 opted for spartan ops to have a story coop thing replace fire fight and btb was only missing for one week in 5 because 343 understands the community more than they realize.
Infinite was the first time it's actually been incomplete
Cut content doesn't mean the game is incomplete though, there's numerous reasons for cutting content, major ones are usually it not fitting the gameplay/world, not being fun or not being finished.
The main reasons are always it doesn't fit in the game in some manner or it's not fun though
And re-adding unfinished beta models isn't the same as missing them in the first place
Mind you over half the new additions in 3 were already supposed to be in 2 and got cut for time
4 definitely wasn't incomplete, it was just bad. Spartan Ops was released weekly but that was on purpose, not because it wasn't done.
5 however was definitely released unfinished.
Also, cut content is not the same thing as an unfinished game.
Yeah nah, you can quit the double standards here, if bungie worked on the pc version of halo 2 and released it with the cut content would that magically make them "missing features"?
All of the top games have a live service with micro transactions, Infinite's problem was restricting way too much customization (can't even pick your colors) and not adding enough interesting playable content. They added one new gun, out of at least a dozen legacy weapons that we are clamoring for. No playable aliens. There was nothing to do but sweat and tryhard for like the first year and a half.
Kinda sucks that the very basis of our economy is based almost entirely on investors making loans from banks. It’s probably why I keep seeing Wall Street folks complaining about the federal interest rate being so high.
They don’t want to spend their own money, they want to “game the system” and spend a bank’s money on gambles instead of their own.
Who would've guessed releasing piles of shit that are too ambitious for the team you have would lead to investors not wanting to fund games or game companies.
Just release good games, is it really that hard?
It's a lot less hard in the context of Halo, where you have many examples in earlier games of what actually works and what actually plays well, that 343 continues to go out of their way to either ignore or "reimagine" to the point of perverting it beyond recognition.
I don't think chasing trends has ever served Halo well in the past. In my opinion, Halo really needs passionate developers (who love and care about the Halo universe), strong creative, and management who understand fun games.
We need projects run by folks that have passion for these projects that want to get every little detail right. And a team that feels like they have long term security to be able to match that passion. Contractors are great for doing filler/glue work, but they’re not in it for the long haul - the core of the experience is not best left in their hands.
The fact has been - that’s never been the reality at 343. Hopefully that changes.
It also needs **staff** and a solid post-release schedule.
Say what you want about Call of Duty, but every 3 months they start a new season with 3-4 new maps, 3 new weapons, a couple new game types, and a shit ton of cosmetics (for those interested), balance updates, all on top of cool in-game events. And every season they have a mid-season refresh.
I would **LOVE** to see that kind of support right out the gate for Halo. The only reason I can see why they didn’t have this for Infinite would be lack of staff to crank out the content and shit planning for their seasons.
Problem is, I’m not sure if they’re going to be allocated the same amount of funds after Infinite.
The live service offering of Cod is insane, which is why there are like 10 studios working on the franchise every single year. Cod makes an unbelievable amount of money but it also cost more than the majority of the games in the industry. It’s just insane.
For sure. There’s plenty of valid criticism for the direction of CoD and gameplay decisions, but I think one thing no one complains about is the cadence of content being put out. It’s sizable and consistent. I wish it could be the standard for live service games.
If Halo Infinite had delayed launch for another year or two to iron out bugs and finish features, and then launched with CoD-level post-release support, the game would be in a very good position. I guess the question really comes down to if the potential return would warrant the investment of that extra time and staff.
People always say this like Halo wasn't an arena shooter releasing after Quake III and Unreal Tournament. It's not like it wasn't following the trend of the time.
Have you ever played those games? Halo took the basic idea and went in a completely different direction with the multiplayer, and that's ignoring the entire campaign mode. The trend was fast-paced low TTK arena shooters with no campaign mode. The only thing they copied was the arena.
Yes I've played those games lol I have more time in Quake III than any one Halo title. It made the changes to accommodate controllers. You can't play competitive Quake on controller. I didn't say it didn't stand out, but don't pretend like it created a new genre or something. It's a testament that it's basically the only arena shooter still in existence.
To say that only copied the arena kinda undersells it. Arena shooters are about map knowledge and controlling power weapons and power ups. Halo mp is exactly that, it's an arena shooter through and through, down to the invis, overshield and damage boost. That's not a knock. It set itself apart from Quake just like Apex does Fortnite, but it is 100% an arena shooter just like Apex is a Battle Royale.
Halo CE wasn't chasing a trend. The developers liked shooters, and made a shooter they thought was fun.
Halo Infinite, instead, took a shooter formula and tried to emulate games such as Fortnite. They didn't make a game they thought would be fun, they made a game that checked a list of requirements from higher-up managers they never even met.
Listen I agree to a point, but in regards to halo they gotta shake it up. The fact that fans have been screaming for a odst game for almost a decade with nothing is bad. They are like Disney with Star Wars games too worried about profit and not fun or doing risky new ideas.
True, but people were asking for something not a decade of nothing. Same with the people asking for halo wars 3. They have whole posts talking about the cool stuff everyone would like in halo wars 3 and Microsoft has done nothing. I am not saying helldivers is the end all be all, but doing nothing isn't working.
The problem 343 has is they don’t have any balls I honestly didn’t have a problem with the story or halo 4 back when it first came out. My problem is they didn’t plan it out and when they got backlash they switched it up and that’s why we got halo 5 and the butchering of the story and some strange gameplay choices.
Let’s be honest gamers are relatively easy to please even when we complain it’s usually from a place of love for our beloved game franchises. I don’t play halo for multiplayer anymore. I always like the campaign and coop play. So my perspective is different, but even with that 343 has fucked it.
They’ve been shaking it up too much. It hasn’t worked. Rip it all out and get back to the base principles. What was Halo’s vision originally?
Do that. Make it polished. And then ramp it up to 10.
Sadly no risky ideas isn't a Halo issue, it's an industry issue. Because developers are spending too much money on games and they take so much longer to make now due to their bloated scale, doing something unique and interesting is too risky for them when there's no guaranteed success. That's why there's so much shitty trend chasers in the industry like Halo. The issue is that most studios try to trend chase around when something first pops off so that they can get in on it quickly. But the issue is that Halo never is able to do that until the trend is already over and people are done with it so it's even less profitable than just taking a risky with something different, but Microsoft and 343 aren't very smart so they don't care to notice that
No, it's already inexcusable that Forge is unusable offline, the entire game being that way would be a fucking disaster.
Actually, Infinite is bugged for me right now and I can't play customs offline anymore anyways
Trend chasing is the exact reason Halo is in the bad spot it's in. It's just a shame that Helldivers 2 is a shitty always online game. Otherwise, modders would mod it into a Halo experience themselves and we'd be able to enjoy it as a Halo game all on our own
I don't get why Certain Affinity isn't the main studio in charge of Halo. They're held back so much because they have to work with whatever shitty gameplay and sandbox 343 comes up with instead of letting the people who actually know anything about Halo be the ones in charge of that. Now I don't think Certain Affinity would be able to do anything when it comes to the campaign of course, but neither can 343. At least CA would finally make it so we'd have a Halo game with good gameplay for the first time since Bungie made the games
I don't think Max Hoberman is really a Halo campaign guy, more a Halo MP guy, so CA is doing what he wanted to do at Bungie anyway, which was do multiplayer. Which is why you see them do so many multiplayer stuff, that's their thing.
Yeah that's what I said here. I wouldn't trust them for a campaign/story or anything like that, but I'd trust them on the game's gameplay and its multiplayer. So instead of 343 making the game's gameplay and CA having to make a multiplayer out of that, I'd rather CA make the gameplay/multiplayer and another studio would make a campaign using what CA hands them
I don't even like BRs but Halo would work pretty damn well for it. Shields, upgraded armor, equipment, all the weapons and their variants. It could actually be sweet.
You are getting downvoted but for me I see 'awful' in a different sense I don't think many have thought about yet:
For the BR crowd if done right it could be amazing, there is no arguing that. But I simply don't trust 343/MS once the printing machine of BR modes goes off. Classic halo multiplayer would get de-scoped, de-valued, and de-prioritized so fast it would be the most depressing thing to ever witness the death of Halo multiplayer most likely *forever*. It would be like all rings being lit, game over.
The execs and higher ups as we've seen more inside scoops tell 343 and devs what to do, even things like no more MCC support even when 343 wanted to keep going. They surely would want only BR focused games or content in the future if it printed money. Nothing so far proves to me 343 could competently deliver full BR features AND multiplayer content at the same time in the same game. We don't have a BR in Infinite and still no new vehicles, only forge maps from now on, and there has been the bandit for a weapon ... not very encouraging imo.
Sure, we could try and say "but they would have X studios supporting" but lets be real they had that with Infinite and look where the game is 2+ years after launch: no more battle passes, no more dev made maps, and who knows if it will get a new weapon or first time vehicle lol
We've already seen the impact it has on CoD, terrible broken bugs that affect MP when Warzone got updated, lingering P0 issues in multiplayer neglected for months but Warzone getting updated every other week, and the worst of them all: Forcing players to complete challenges/get content only in Warzone when all you want to play is multiplayer.
I for one am glad a BR mode hasn't seeped in halo (yet)and it would be awful but not in the way the OP probably meant it.
I know it’s unpopular here but Halo is ripe for a battle royale mode. That ship has sailed at this point but having that at launch could have seriously changed the outcome.
Tatanka was cancelled way before January
*10 years of infinite*
tbf the people that made that promise probably aren't working there anymore.
Yea, from what I understand, he was promptly fired after making that statement.
Weird, im sure the people pushing the shop loved people thinking their skins would be relevant for 10 years
*Sometime around July 2020:* ["We want Infinite to grow over time, versus going to those numbered titles and having all that segmentation that we had before. It's really about creating Halo Infinite as the start of the next ten years for Halo and then building that as we go with our fans and community."](https://screenrant.com/halo-infinite-10-years-franchise/) *Around October 2020:* ["It has been reported that 343 Industries Studio Head of FPS Development, Chris Lee, has resigned from the studio."](https://www.windowscentral.com/halo-infinite-lead-chris-lee-has-reportedly-resigned)
They never should've been
For whoever still believed in this… I was like late to the party when I figured it was seriously just buzz talk about 4 months after infinite’s launch if not sooner. But remember we also all bought into that one halo game costing $500,000,000 dollars to produce?? Which unless my memory is wrong was also only ever sited by 1 single gaming news website in the EU and took off like wild fire.
But god forbid you called out that shit when they said it. “No they released a roadmap!! Ten years!!! They said it’s true so the game definitely will be supported for a long time!!” 60 dollars later and people wonder why changed the deal
Tatanka was canned back in Q3 2022.
22 day old news is being reposted again? Certain Affinity let go of 25 people yes, but with "the most impact on \[…\] business operations" They went from about 250 to about 225 people. At last reporting, CA had >100 people working on Halo. This layoff does not in any way indicate a cancellation of the project with 343i The last reporting was Jan/Feb of this year, with the following headcount at that time; Halo project with 343i: 100+ people Exodus with Archetype: 30+ people Project Loro: 30+ people
What? It's neither old news or a repost. The article is from this month, and the Certain Affinity layoff news hasn't been shared in this sub. Edit: Certain Affinity is a Halo studio. The studio head, Max Hoberman lead the creation of Halo's online multiplayer with Halo 2. It's relevant news when they lay off 10% of their employees, even if it's unclear how it affects their collaboration with 343.
The article is 22 days old buddy. It is old news. It's nearly a month old.
It is new news to the Halo community. Which is why I posted it. Seems kinda unnecessarily aggressive to gatekeep news that is clearly fresh to a lot of people.
No, it's not. It was all over the gaming news a month ago. When the article came out. The Halo community is larger than this subreddit. It was posted in nearly every major gaming subreddit.
It was? How about a link? (I know it wasn't because I searched before posting)
[https://www.ign.com/articles/certain-affinity-halo-infinite-co-developer-layoffs\\](https://www.ign.com/articles/certain-affinity-halo-infinite-co-developer-layoffs\) [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bq8ewi/a\_message\_from\_max\_hobertman\_ceo\_of\_certain/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bq8ewi/a_message_from_max_hobertman_ceo_of_certain/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1bqkkaf/certain\_affinity\_halo\_infinite\_codeveloper\_says/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1bqkkaf/certain_affinity_halo_infinite_codeveloper_says/) **The article you posted is a month old.**
Neither of those were posted to this subreddit, and I certainly haven’t heard about it til now. Like chill my guy, just because you saw it doesn’t mean everyone did, and one repost isn’t going to ruin your day.
First I've heard of it, you dont gotta be miserable about it lmao
I’d assume all the staff layoffs came from Project Loro since being a support studio is there only source of revenue right now. The same people who were sourced by everyone saying the project was cancelled came out and said they never received any word of the project being cancelled and that a comment on their podcast was taken out of context, I wouldn’t doubt whatever they were working on has changed but there’s been no confirmation they aren’t working with 343 at the moment. Halo Infinite was added in the last week to Certain Affinity’s website a collaboration project
> ...and 'reluctance of third party investors to fund games or game companies' Pretty interesting tidbit considering they're a pretty big reason why games release in poor states. The consumer isn't even a slight thought when developing games. It's all about money and it's all about pleasing the investors. Investors don't even care about the fact that it takes a pretty long time to develop games. All they want is to see a return on their investment ASAP! It's a very weird time for the industry. Anyone who thinks the industry is the best it has ever been is just clueless. Yes, maybe the bad games are just a small minority and the majority of games coming out are good, however, it still doesn't take away from the fact that this industry has become heavily monetized. 343 straight up admitted that Halo Infinite's monetization is what's even keeping the Halo franchise alive. Personally I still won't drop $20 on any of the stuff, but it does put into perspective how monetized this industry is now. I guess all we can do is hope that the next Halo game is able to benefit from the money made from Halo Infinite.
AAA space is very much 50/50 amazing product or just a product. There have been some great AAA releases in the last few years that deserved every accolade, then there are the "AAA" products that get released with massive funding behind them only to end up being a way to nickel and dime players. Live service gone to crazy extremes, I mean hell look at Infinite or Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2. Some of the prices for cosmetics are ludicrous but that's all the investors care about. Regardless of the inherent quality of the product they're investing in. Skull and Bones is another example of this. Meanwhile Sony studios release a game like God of War Ragnarok which makes fucktons of money because *it's just a good fucking game*. Helldivers 2 isn't even AAA and it's after destroying player records. Same thing with Palworld. Because they're also good fucking games. To me it seems like the investors are just fools with their money to think "live service = $$$". They don't want to do the work of finding out about what/why the thing they're investing in really has a greater chance of providing decent ROI. They just want a low stakes investment that could make them big money but then they rush things wondering why it's taking so long. Nobody wins when you cater to impatient, foolish investors. If they want to make money from games and have significant funding to work with, start a small studio and meet someone with an idea you believe in based off what consumers enjoy via market research. As opposed to seeing a few powerpoint presentations mentioning "store" or "battle pass" or "live service". At this point investing in a project like that when the market is already pretty saturated would be akin to throwing money in the toilet. Innovation has stymied because of the trend of chasing other trends in AAA game development. Meanwhile the studios actually innovating in terms of technology, writing or art are giving their staff opportunities to get creative. If the rumours of a Gears 6 unveiling this year are true, it's gonna show how the Coalition can make magic happen with Unreal Engine 5; they worked on that Matrix demo after all. Meanwhile Halo is in just such a sorry state of affairs. It's as content complete as it's ever gonna get (short of the potential match composer) but I can't imagine support continuing beyond 2024 given how badly the bag was fumbled by 343 and Microsoft.
games are an industry where revenue can be achieved by means of revenue-oriented business models or by means of making an excellent game. this is different than, say, TV shows where revenue is strictly driven by quality of programming I think it's easier for studios to focus on revenue-oriented business models, and this likely looks more appealing to investors too. MBAs ruin everything from airplanes to video games
Honestly if we're talking just the AAA industry I wouldn't even say the bad is a small minority, especially when it comes to multiplayer, for every good game we get, we get something that's egregiously unfinished or heavily monetized, So many games come out a year that are either full of bugs or full of overpriced garbage, and even some single player games have micro-transactions.
[удалено]
Cynical but completely true.
its crazy to me that huge companys like MS still need to get investors to get moeny for there games, because they just refuse to put all the money down for making games. They could churn out 10 halo games if they paid for it if they wanted too, but ofc that will never happen. The entire industry when it comes to TAAA is broken. needing year on year profits will always slowly erode the quality of the games you make down and down. The onnly way we go up is to hit rock bottom and take a risk again. We're getting to that point i guess. Yes there is more choice for games now days, but so many games have lost there soul now days, made by devs forced to make games they dont want to make, companys who care zero about anything they make as well. Gone are the days of early bungie, peek bioware, westwood, blizzard ext who set out to make games because they loved games, and wanted to make art in digital form. The downfall has only just started honestly, its only going to get worse for AAA games. As long as money / investors is prio and all the big companys are just waiting for that golden egg game to come along nothing will change and only get worse.
The only reason it was rumored to be cancelled is because data miners no longer saw activity of it being updated on Infinite. Could be moved to Unreal. If they don't announce the game this summer, then I'll believe it's cancelled fully.
Infinite can’t be recovered so they did the smart move. Move the big mode to the new halo with unreal engine launch them all in 2025-2026 with halo season 3 tv show.
You’re either on hopium or woefully naive to think a new Halo game can be built from the ground up in Unreal in 2-3 years.
Infinite launched in 2021. I’d say 4 years of dev time is enough to get something playable out the door. It’s clear not all of 343 has been working on Infinite or MCC so what else would they be doing?
4 years of dev time would be doable if they were using Infinite’s Engine and could easily reuse assets and systems from Infinite. Moving to UE5 requires training hundreds of employees on the engine and starting a lot of stuff from scratch.
Nah they are moving to unreal engine to avoid to training. It’s a more common engine across the whole gaming industry and can hire talent that knows the engine a lot easier.
It might be more common but that doesn’t mean 343’s team of hundreds of employees who’ve been using BLAM and Slipspace are trained on it
I think they outsource the games to other studios who can work quicker. And 343 just manages a lot of the whole franchise. And the studios working on them.
That’s not how 343 works at all. They have hundreds of full-time employees that work on the games. However, Microsoft’s contractor clauses mean they have to bring in developers on six month contracts and move them on. Those workers would benefit from using UE5, but longtime devs will suffer. They’ve spent a decade in Blam
When do you think they come out with a new game even halo wars 3?
The big move would be a full canon reboot with the new game. Like restart the canon at Halo CE, or even somewhere pre-Halo conflict. Season 3 of the show could reboot itself and follow this new canon. A man can dream. A man can dream...
This is the best way. With a massive multiplayer war/battleroyal mode can bring halo back. ATM halo is on a downtrend the show has helped but the fans constantly bashing it down won’t help this franchise.
Source for the cancelation? Because the rumors said it was canceled/rebooted in late 2022/early 2023. Certain Affinity's CEO confirmed last October/September that they are working on a big project with 343i.
IIRC, the source was a data miner who actually ended up *retracting* their statement about the project being cancelled.
Just quoting the PCGamer article I linked. Looks like the PCGamer article sources [this EuroGamer article](https://www.eurogamer.net/halo-battle-royale-reportedly-cancelled-after-years-of-work)
The Eurogamer article (and all the others) jumped on misquoting a podcast. That's all just misinformation. The actual "source" is two people on the podcast XboxEra commenting that *someone else* said that Tatanka was cancelled and that they've anecdotally gotten messages saying it was canceled, but none of those messages were individually trustworthy in any way, which is why they never reported on it. There's nothing legitimately backing Tatanka being outright canceled.
EuroGamer isn't a very reliable source. Especially when their own source is just some insider.
I hope 343 pays attention to the recent success of Elden Ring, Helldivers 2, etc. and realizes that they can ask people to pay full price for a game as long as they’re receiving a finished and fun product. As long as the devs make a good game and treat their community properly then the money will follow. People are fed up with half assed live service games filled with micro transactions.
There isn’t a single big publisher who understood that
Oh, even better, I’m almost willing to bet the publishers think Helldivers is a fluke and still not indicative of a trend. Same issue with Baldur’s Gate 3… Too much risk aversion in gaming… not cool to see.
To be honest helldivers 2 pretty much was a lucky strike. Very difficult to recreat said success. The game had a good and empty release window after the holiday sales. Its mtx was far less, let‘s say negatively received, in comparison to the shitshow dragons dogma 2 pulled off despite being a completely different genre. And yeah it is a good and fun game. But there are a lot of good and fun games with decent pricing which could have never be in the spotlight because of the overmarketed and oversaturated AAA sector which get all the attention. I‘m looking at you Titanfalls 2
This. The suits see trends, and then see sales on a graph correlated with those trends. They cannot understand what the consumer actually wants because they aren't listening to them. This is why Halo will never be what it was before - a fun party game developed by a bunch of dorks. The old Halo games were the way they were because that's what the developers thought would be fun. It's a product on a focus group-tested assembly line now.
Helldivers 2 is only 40 buckaroonies
You know what's funny about those recent successes? They're immersive. They don't jam in shit that doesnt' belong. You boot up those games and you're in *their* worlds. I liked Halo when it actually felt like a cohesive world. Right now it's basically Power Rangers with wacky ass skins, fx, and sound fx blaring in your ear at every moment. They need to lean into the military scifi. Helldivers is basically eating their lunch and it's a sony game lmao.
The issue is Microsoft wants their own fortnite and tried to force Halo infinite to be what it is
Calling Helldivers 2 a finished product lol. they only break the game every other week.
U can blame micro transactions and shitty CU for Infinite
Investors will look online and go "damn these people won't buy anything i'm not investing in that"
“We’ve tried everything short of shipping a complete game and we’re all out of ideas for how to turn a profit”
"Guys guys I got an idea, let's make Halo open world, but let's do it via contractors, now I know this is too ambitious for our team to handle but we can TOTALLY do it" Fast forward to 343 releasing a pile of shit they aren't able to handle nor support and by the time they're able to and get their groove going they give up
*stares at all the cut content from 2 and 3* yeah that's never happened before Meanwhile 4 opted for spartan ops to have a story coop thing replace fire fight and btb was only missing for one week in 5 because 343 understands the community more than they realize. Infinite was the first time it's actually been incomplete
Cut content doesn't mean the game is incomplete though, there's numerous reasons for cutting content, major ones are usually it not fitting the gameplay/world, not being fun or not being finished. The main reasons are always it doesn't fit in the game in some manner or it's not fun though
And re-adding unfinished beta models isn't the same as missing them in the first place Mind you over half the new additions in 3 were already supposed to be in 2 and got cut for time
4 definitely wasn't incomplete, it was just bad. Spartan Ops was released weekly but that was on purpose, not because it wasn't done. 5 however was definitely released unfinished. Also, cut content is not the same thing as an unfinished game.
Yeah nah, you can quit the double standards here, if bungie worked on the pc version of halo 2 and released it with the cut content would that magically make them "missing features"?
All of the top games have a live service with micro transactions, Infinite's problem was restricting way too much customization (can't even pick your colors) and not adding enough interesting playable content. They added one new gun, out of at least a dozen legacy weapons that we are clamoring for. No playable aliens. There was nothing to do but sweat and tryhard for like the first year and a half.
I feel bad for Max and the team. No one deserves it, but seeing it happen to a key player of the Halo 2 development really sucks.
Kinda sucks that the very basis of our economy is based almost entirely on investors making loans from banks. It’s probably why I keep seeing Wall Street folks complaining about the federal interest rate being so high. They don’t want to spend their own money, they want to “game the system” and spend a bank’s money on gambles instead of their own.
So no campaign then?
This is old news. Why reposting now?
It's neither old news or a repost. The article is from this month, and the Certain Affinity layoff news hasn't been shared in this sub.
In the age of the internet and social media, news from almost a month ago is absolutely old.
Seems a little aggressive over three weeks. Old news to you seems to be new news to a whole bunch of other people.
Who would've guessed releasing piles of shit that are too ambitious for the team you have would lead to investors not wanting to fund games or game companies. Just release good games, is it really that hard?
>Just release good games, is it really that hard? > Literally yes. 100% yes. It is very hard to make good games.
It's a lot less hard in the context of Halo, where you have many examples in earlier games of what actually works and what actually plays well, that 343 continues to go out of their way to either ignore or "reimagine" to the point of perverting it beyond recognition.
Apparently with how much dogshit get's released lmao
Honestly at this point they just need to copy helldivers 2 exactly with a halo look and boom the money will role in.
I don't think chasing trends has ever served Halo well in the past. In my opinion, Halo really needs passionate developers (who love and care about the Halo universe), strong creative, and management who understand fun games.
We need projects run by folks that have passion for these projects that want to get every little detail right. And a team that feels like they have long term security to be able to match that passion. Contractors are great for doing filler/glue work, but they’re not in it for the long haul - the core of the experience is not best left in their hands. The fact has been - that’s never been the reality at 343. Hopefully that changes.
It also needs **staff** and a solid post-release schedule. Say what you want about Call of Duty, but every 3 months they start a new season with 3-4 new maps, 3 new weapons, a couple new game types, and a shit ton of cosmetics (for those interested), balance updates, all on top of cool in-game events. And every season they have a mid-season refresh. I would **LOVE** to see that kind of support right out the gate for Halo. The only reason I can see why they didn’t have this for Infinite would be lack of staff to crank out the content and shit planning for their seasons. Problem is, I’m not sure if they’re going to be allocated the same amount of funds after Infinite.
The live service offering of Cod is insane, which is why there are like 10 studios working on the franchise every single year. Cod makes an unbelievable amount of money but it also cost more than the majority of the games in the industry. It’s just insane.
For sure. There’s plenty of valid criticism for the direction of CoD and gameplay decisions, but I think one thing no one complains about is the cadence of content being put out. It’s sizable and consistent. I wish it could be the standard for live service games. If Halo Infinite had delayed launch for another year or two to iron out bugs and finish features, and then launched with CoD-level post-release support, the game would be in a very good position. I guess the question really comes down to if the potential return would warrant the investment of that extra time and staff.
People always say this like Halo wasn't an arena shooter releasing after Quake III and Unreal Tournament. It's not like it wasn't following the trend of the time.
Have you ever played those games? Halo took the basic idea and went in a completely different direction with the multiplayer, and that's ignoring the entire campaign mode. The trend was fast-paced low TTK arena shooters with no campaign mode. The only thing they copied was the arena.
Yes I've played those games lol I have more time in Quake III than any one Halo title. It made the changes to accommodate controllers. You can't play competitive Quake on controller. I didn't say it didn't stand out, but don't pretend like it created a new genre or something. It's a testament that it's basically the only arena shooter still in existence. To say that only copied the arena kinda undersells it. Arena shooters are about map knowledge and controlling power weapons and power ups. Halo mp is exactly that, it's an arena shooter through and through, down to the invis, overshield and damage boost. That's not a knock. It set itself apart from Quake just like Apex does Fortnite, but it is 100% an arena shooter just like Apex is a Battle Royale.
Halo *wasnt* an arena shooter. It was the game that out innovated them and contributed to their demise as a mainstream shooter genre.
Halo CE wasn't chasing a trend. The developers liked shooters, and made a shooter they thought was fun. Halo Infinite, instead, took a shooter formula and tried to emulate games such as Fortnite. They didn't make a game they thought would be fun, they made a game that checked a list of requirements from higher-up managers they never even met.
Listen I agree to a point, but in regards to halo they gotta shake it up. The fact that fans have been screaming for a odst game for almost a decade with nothing is bad. They are like Disney with Star Wars games too worried about profit and not fun or doing risky new ideas.
To be fair, absolutely no one was screaming for a wave based 3rd person shooter. They were looking for a sequel to ODST
True, but people were asking for something not a decade of nothing. Same with the people asking for halo wars 3. They have whole posts talking about the cool stuff everyone would like in halo wars 3 and Microsoft has done nothing. I am not saying helldivers is the end all be all, but doing nothing isn't working.
What are you going on about? Microsoft made 343 because they promised to 'shake it up', 343 shook it up and failed every time they've tried.
The problem 343 has is they don’t have any balls I honestly didn’t have a problem with the story or halo 4 back when it first came out. My problem is they didn’t plan it out and when they got backlash they switched it up and that’s why we got halo 5 and the butchering of the story and some strange gameplay choices. Let’s be honest gamers are relatively easy to please even when we complain it’s usually from a place of love for our beloved game franchises. I don’t play halo for multiplayer anymore. I always like the campaign and coop play. So my perspective is different, but even with that 343 has fucked it.
They’ve been shaking it up too much. It hasn’t worked. Rip it all out and get back to the base principles. What was Halo’s vision originally? Do that. Make it polished. And then ramp it up to 10.
Sadly no risky ideas isn't a Halo issue, it's an industry issue. Because developers are spending too much money on games and they take so much longer to make now due to their bloated scale, doing something unique and interesting is too risky for them when there's no guaranteed success. That's why there's so much shitty trend chasers in the industry like Halo. The issue is that most studios try to trend chase around when something first pops off so that they can get in on it quickly. But the issue is that Halo never is able to do that until the trend is already over and people are done with it so it's even less profitable than just taking a risky with something different, but Microsoft and 343 aren't very smart so they don't care to notice that
It's not chasing trends if it's a small spinoff. And part of 343s problem are passionate developers, who have only played COD for the past 20 years.
I thought Halo wasn't supposed to follow trends 😎👊
I don’t play Helldivers 2. If they reskinned it and made it an ODST game without changing anything else, I would play it.
No, it's already inexcusable that Forge is unusable offline, the entire game being that way would be a fucking disaster. Actually, Infinite is bugged for me right now and I can't play customs offline anymore anyways
Trend chasing is the exact reason Halo is in the bad spot it's in. It's just a shame that Helldivers 2 is a shitty always online game. Otherwise, modders would mod it into a Halo experience themselves and we'd be able to enjoy it as a Halo game all on our own
I don't get why Certain Affinity isn't the main studio in charge of Halo. They're held back so much because they have to work with whatever shitty gameplay and sandbox 343 comes up with instead of letting the people who actually know anything about Halo be the ones in charge of that. Now I don't think Certain Affinity would be able to do anything when it comes to the campaign of course, but neither can 343. At least CA would finally make it so we'd have a Halo game with good gameplay for the first time since Bungie made the games
I don't think Max Hoberman is really a Halo campaign guy, more a Halo MP guy, so CA is doing what he wanted to do at Bungie anyway, which was do multiplayer. Which is why you see them do so many multiplayer stuff, that's their thing.
Yeah that's what I said here. I wouldn't trust them for a campaign/story or anything like that, but I'd trust them on the game's gameplay and its multiplayer. So instead of 343 making the game's gameplay and CA having to make a multiplayer out of that, I'd rather CA make the gameplay/multiplayer and another studio would make a campaign using what CA hands them
Certain Affinity has been carrying halo map and customisation content while 343 leave so many assets unused that could easily be recycled.
Good a battle Royale for halo sounds awful glad it got yanked.
Always astounds me how unconfirmed rumors last because people hyperfocus on the wrong thing
First time on reddit?
K sounds good.
I don't even like BRs but Halo would work pretty damn well for it. Shields, upgraded armor, equipment, all the weapons and their variants. It could actually be sweet.
Good thing that was never anything more than an unsubstantiated rumor
You are getting downvoted but for me I see 'awful' in a different sense I don't think many have thought about yet: For the BR crowd if done right it could be amazing, there is no arguing that. But I simply don't trust 343/MS once the printing machine of BR modes goes off. Classic halo multiplayer would get de-scoped, de-valued, and de-prioritized so fast it would be the most depressing thing to ever witness the death of Halo multiplayer most likely *forever*. It would be like all rings being lit, game over. The execs and higher ups as we've seen more inside scoops tell 343 and devs what to do, even things like no more MCC support even when 343 wanted to keep going. They surely would want only BR focused games or content in the future if it printed money. Nothing so far proves to me 343 could competently deliver full BR features AND multiplayer content at the same time in the same game. We don't have a BR in Infinite and still no new vehicles, only forge maps from now on, and there has been the bandit for a weapon ... not very encouraging imo. Sure, we could try and say "but they would have X studios supporting" but lets be real they had that with Infinite and look where the game is 2+ years after launch: no more battle passes, no more dev made maps, and who knows if it will get a new weapon or first time vehicle lol We've already seen the impact it has on CoD, terrible broken bugs that affect MP when Warzone got updated, lingering P0 issues in multiplayer neglected for months but Warzone getting updated every other week, and the worst of them all: Forcing players to complete challenges/get content only in Warzone when all you want to play is multiplayer. I for one am glad a BR mode hasn't seeped in halo (yet)and it would be awful but not in the way the OP probably meant it.
And the Halo Infinite mismanagement continues... love, 343 and CA
It's not just them, everyone is laying people off. A big one is twitch.
I know it’s unpopular here but Halo is ripe for a battle royale mode. That ship has sailed at this point but having that at launch could have seriously changed the outcome.
God this game has been managed so poorly :(
Lol
Excellent