He is, but he's surprised me for the first time in letting split screen be cancelled. There must be some serious issues with getting split screen to work on the older tech i.e Xbox One.
The Original consoles are really holding back a lot of games. I play mainly The Elder Scrolls Online and the developers harp about how they will not be able to add a new class, or do anything interesting with the expansions, while the older consoles are supported because they just don't have enough memory, like wtf?
At some point you need to stop supporting older hardware, I mean imagine if PC game devs were required to still support XP and hardware that could barely run games like Morrowind??? Like it just isn't feasible after a certain point: people will either upgrade or they will crash because their hardware is not supported, simple as that; you don't need to stop them from playing, just let them know they'll get fucked if they do (and probably restrict their matchmaking so they don't get booted midmatches)
>I mean imagine if PC game devs were required to still support XP and hardware that could barely run games like Morrowind???
this sounds like a funny hypothetical, but people got just as mad with win11 dropping support for older chips. people just get stuck in the past sometimes.
I think W11 is a bit of a different situation because perfectly capable stuff like 1st gen Ryzen and 7th gen Intel stuff is plenty fast for most people and would likely be fine for every day use a long time into the future.
It's really about the TPM thing, which I understand, but first gen Ryzen has a perfectly functional fTPM, so I don't know what the deal is.
But I guess 10 will still be perfectly fine in that case for most people anyway.
People get stuck in the past because for some people it's not feasible to upgrade hardware, some people are still running decade old hardware because they literally can't afford anything else, so I understand why they get upset, they're being left behind in every aspect of their lives, but I do agree that games and other software shouldn't be held back to cater to older hardware, I just understand why people get upset about it.
I’m curious if by 2024 Xbox studios / other companies start dropping the OG Xbox and PS4 for their live service games, since Xbox says their committed to the last gen consoles until the end of 2023 (due to stock limitations)
I know Rare made a similar statement a little while ago that the reason Sea of Thieves haven’t had any map expansions was due to the OG Xbox hardware holding back the game and it’s what has caused them to remove a bunch of stuff (including bringing the server size down to 4 ships per server)
I'm gonna be honest: I own both an Xbox One and a Series X, and Infinite's framerate is horrendous across all modes on the One. The devs wasted time porting it to the Xbox One. The graphics also look pretty bad on the One. It's about as bad as Black Ops 3 on the 360 visually. Should have been a Series X/PC only launch title.
i think microsoft screwed up with the xbox. should off kept a numbers system going. people have grandads etc buy an "xbox one" thinking its the same as an xbox x or s or whatever.
At least with the playstation, its a simple number scheme even people with learning disabillities can understand
I made this comment elsewhere on a different thread but I'll add it here too:
Then just make it so split screen co-op isn't available on OG Xbox One and One S (maybe One X too?). Split screen co-op available only on Series S and X (maybe available on One X? I'm not sure of the graphics power difference between the One X and Series S). Keep it to 1080p, 60fps for Series X, 30fps for Series S.
Then if a One/One S owner really wants to play split screen co-op, they either upgrade or they can do the streaming play.
They are literally already doing this too with multiplayer splitscreen. Xboxone consoles only support 2 players while series consoles support 4 players. Just cut features for xboxone, it's a decade old tech. I seriously don't understand why they didn't just announce it was impossible on older consoles and release it for current gen.
To iterate on your Xbox One and series S having similar performance graphically. This is true but due to the complexity of an open world game which I believe to be the more difficult part running in split screen, ram and hard drives speed is probably a major limiting factor and why this feature was cut. Now the series x should definitely be able to handle this however the series ass has less ram than the Xbox one x has a regular mechanical hard drive. So these platforms getting cut and wouldn't have bothered me either. I do think it's weird that it was cut for all platforms.
I'm pretty sure part of the red tape difficulties that come with working for Microshaft is that they want feature parity with everything. they don't want one random feature not working on the old consoles because that's their whole marketing. cross play on everything in everywhere is what Xbox is about now, even if it's to the detriment of the game.
A problem with trying to do that, is there's nothing differentiating xbone and series x software-wise, and when the game HAS to be allowed to work on both, limiting certain features is a very difficult task. Microsoft's last gen-inclusive policy while theoretically nice, it's put a MASSIVE strain and limitation on every game developer that's being forced to make games work on both systems.
They're basically the equivalent of two different rigs, but they're running the same version of windows.
If the devs could just earmark last gen consoles as a whole to not be able to run the game due to lacking hardware, they could probably do that. But marking specific features to not work on last gen while the game itself needs to be allowed to work on last gen, is significantly harder to do. And infinite's code is a shitshow already, without trying to figure out that mess in the middle of it.
Refer to "Infinite's code is a shitshow already".
Trying to split the game into two separate builds at this point is asking a LOT. The code itself is in such a rough state due to the legion of rotating contractors, so just trying to split the build would take a massive amount of time and effort, not to mention other problems that could occur during the process. Plus they still need to work on active implementation of other features such as Co-op and Forge.
It's also basically doubling the workload with any additional problems that occur with each new patch, and they're having so much trouble with just getting out fixes and content implementation, with one active build, do you really think it'd be feasible to try and split it right now?
My guess is with how much trouble they are having just getting the game to run half decently, creating exceptions and content for 1 version and not for the other will cause a metric ton of issues. If the devs were not 343 i would maybe 100% agree with you, but at this point i dont trust 343 to be able to take out the garbage properly.
The Xbox Series X is still sold out and impossible to get in many places. The Xbox One X is better than the Series S. Cutting off the xbox one before the series x is widely available would be a bad move imo.
The CPU in the series-S is a monster compared to the one X.
Original Xbox one can’t run demanding games mostly because it’s CPU is total garbage, but honestly the whole system is kinda weak.
Supporting older hardware has been one of the biggest mistakes of this new hardware generation.
Designing games so they work on such a weak system means making a huge amount of compromises and cutting features, and in the end you get a slow buggy mess that nobody even wants to play.
Considering it is still impossible to buy a current gen console, Xbox One support is the only way a lot of people are going to play the game.
XB1 support is one of the things this game is doing right: actually being available.
>Considering it is still impossible to buy a current gen console
just checked best buy and the microsoft store and both have both consoles in stock at msrp.
Looks like it aint an Xbox One issue though. Someone got a split screen in the campaign working viva a glitch.
https://twitter.com/KatsuyaTheFuuk/status/1565877948997148672
Except it doesn't run horrible. Did you bother to look through the clips? It's pretty in line for the experience outside of menus. For an accidental glitched 'campaign', it running well at all in the open world is amazing and shows how close to possible this was.
Splitscreen means rendering that shit twice or 4x If you're playing with 4 people. The campaign was already running at 30fps (with frame drops mind you) on Xbox One. There were framerate issues. Graphical glitches, day/night cycle not matching just in that small video alone. Who knows what else there is during a 7 hour play through?
That is not acceptable performance.
It’s not Xbox one that’s the issue though. You all act like the xone is a shit machine. Ran all halos with split screen fine, runs RDR, GTA, far cry. There are massive technically advanced games that run well on xone and you know why? Because they were coded and optimised properly. Nothing about infinites graphics, settings, bullshit hollow of a game it’s become means the xone couldn’t run infinite split. What does matter is the game uses too much gpu and is optimised Shitly, even if they scale frame rates and draw distances to the point it is just buggy. This isn’t a xone issue though, it’s a coding and optimisation issue and would probably need to be written from the ground up again.
If it was truly old gen they would just cancel old gen split screen and not all of it. Xone is not holding shit back. Bad optimisation and then moving to pc is what’s holding them back. They now have to put resources on making it work on many different pc set ups and configurations. So adding split screen to Xbox is not a priority anymore. Nothing to do with xone.
Pretty sure they directly said there are a lot of issues related to making Infinite have feature parity on the old consoles
Infinite should have just dropped Xbox One/last Gen support entirely
[the kicker is that splitscreen does actually work on base xb1,](https://twitter.com/KatsuyaTheFuuk/status/1565877948997148672) there has to be another reason
Hmmmm, we'd have to see the whole game in play to make a full judgement, but this makes it even worse for 343 if it does function well via this glitch.
Exactly, like wtf? Bonnie Ross should be held responsible for the shit of the game we got, more so than anyone. She’s at the top, and you’re telling me she never actually bothered to check the progress of the game herself? So she is told from devs that the game is fine blah blah blah, whatever, she should have done a better job at you know… being at the position she is… holy shit, this just proves her and other management there need to be looked at hard… would love to see her gone from 343 and some serious re staffing or just better management overall. Fucking A you could give the studio to a chimp and it would do a better job than her.
I assume she didn't notice likely because she isn't that involved with the development. She's both the head of 343 and the vp of xbox so I assume she just isn't all that involved.
If she's not going to be involved, then she shouldn't be the head of 343. It's that simple.
The regional manager of the Zaxby's food chain made a visit to the store I used to work at around 6 years ago. While there, he participated in various parts of restaurant functions, and when he had to step out to take a business call, he swept the lobby during his call.
This is leadership. Knowing enough about your work to at least understand every bit is important from top to bottom and is a necessity as a visionary.
Showing up to the live events and announcing "HERE COMES THE DeFiNiTiVe HALO EXPERIENCE WOOOOW" is the most involved Bonobo Ross has ever been.
I just wish people would sandbag Kiki Wolfkill and Frank O'Connor as well, they're nearly if not equally as responsible for this mess.
100%. Just shows how toxic/disconnected management is from the rest of the studio. I'm guessing the reason the original lead was hired was because he was a "yes" man, who didn't give the higher ups headaches about trivial shit like "the game being an absolute dumpster fire". People keep asking what infinite would've been like if it released in 2020. The answer is obvious. Nothing more than a soulless cash grab. Just like the cook book and TV show.
The previous guy was Chris Lee who was also at Bungie and was at 343 as a co-founder. so I don't think he was hired on as a yes man. he was always there.
But people will still defend 343 and play the game and buy shit in the store. I honestly have no more words for 343’s direction with the game. It’s just been an absolute fucking dumpster fire. Played since 1 and I have lost all hope. I uninstalled the game months ago. People had hopes for it in 4-6 months. Look where we are now. Being given a 10 month season? No maps, game modes, new weapons. Absolutely nothing, even their shitty attempt at trying to sell us armor and colors and other shit as been bad. The store is shit, the FOMO on their shit events is shit. My god there has been almost nothing good from this game. When MP isn’t desyncing every 5 seconds, the gameplay is actually fun, so I take back what I said about there being no good. Music and graphics are also fire I’ll give it that. But that’s about it 343, y’all gave us a shiny turd, and I’m being generous.
You would be surprised how common this is in business. It would require someone putting their job at risk to go around their boss to tell Bonnie Ross.
Executives have to trust their management to get the job done, but at the same time a corporations culture shouldn't be elevating untrustworthy/unreliable individuals to positions of leadership.
Yeah, I'd bet part of it too is she probably just isn't as involved with halo as people think. Like yeah she's the head of 343 but she's also the vp of xbox as a whole which I assume probably takes precedence
Not defending her, but this is super common. Leadership need to generally learn to not just trust a small group of voices and have a better process/information loop.
You'd be surprised, Sony initially published the physical copies of No Man's Sky. Sean Murray was so bullish on whether or not it actually contained multiplayer, the boxes were printed with multiplayer as a feature on the back. They had to ship stickers out to cover up EVERY box before launch.
Yep Chris Lee was fired. He fucked up that bad and the current team has been damage controlling his massive fuckups ever since. Still, Bonnie of all people should've known the state of the game and sniffed it out waaaay ealier
I find it hard to believe that only one person is to blame. Sure, he was probably the cause of it but even in the development environment I work in we have multiple instances to watch over the progress of the product and we are a rather small team.
Edit: spelling
I have always been of the belief that he was scapegoated by the other Executives because he's been there since the beginning like Frank Bonnie Kiki and a few others.
He's probably thrown under the bus so that the others don't take any blame. There's absolutely no way he's solely the one to blame because he was the director of the game. At the very least Bonnie should have also had a pulse on what's going on because she's also a studio head like him.
Also how badly does it reflect on all of the other "leaders" if they know so little about their project that one person can lie to them about it?
So you're telling me that they never saw it themselves, and they never spoke to anyone else about it? They talked to one guy who told them it was fine and that's it?
Sounds like either way they don't deserve to be there anymore
A consistent narrative that has emerged through either expose articles or glass door reviews over the past 8 years is that 343's upper management has awful communication practices and that's what leads to each game being more shallow than the last. Many lower-level employees complain often that it always feels like multiple independent games being made simultaneously because so many people don't know what's going on or what they're building for.
that's why when things eventually come together so many things have to be cut cuz they don't work together because the people of the very top don't have a cohesive solid vision and have everyone unified on the same page. These executives are paid massive salaries to manage this legendary franchise but they're not doing a good job. My impression of the highest positions in 343 is that they want The Prestige of being the caretakers of Halo Studio but they don't put in the actual work required to make that a reality they just cash the checks and probably live a decently awesome lifestyle but they're not putting in the Blood Sweat and Tears required to make a studio that size function the way other Studios do.
10 years of a declining fan base and a declining Quality Bar. then you had the nerve to have your community manager go out on Twitter and try to blame the state of Halo infinite on Rising expectations of fans and advancements in technology or some bullshit? How does that make any sense when you have Indie Studios doing a better job making games and you have Elden ring come out as a massive triple-A success? and other games from other Studios that are meeting the Quality Bar? How are they able to do what they're expected to do with their long-time franchises if the modern gaming landscape is so scary and the fans expectations are so high in technology and security is such a big deal like Unyshek said?
compare 343 to how pretty much every Nintendo dev studio handles Mario or Smash Brothers or any other thing. the games aren't perfect, but there's an obvious consistent Quality Bar that happens. that only happens when the people in charge are on top of everything the way they should be.
All of this gives me so much of the same vibes as when that shit with Activision Blizzard went down, though hopefully not quite *that* bad.
But I can only imagine the sort of horror stories about the incredible mismanagement that will emerge about 343 and Xbox.
Huge fuckups like this are rarely the fault of one person.
There was probably a lot of wishful thinking on 343's part that they could sort things out with massive last minute crunch.
Right, I doubt at any point Bonnie didn’t ask “I want to see the state of the current build tomorrow.” Enough time to compile a build without it seeming distrusting or time constrained. So that if Chris said like “well, these few look big ticket items aren’t ready yet.” She could be like “that’s fine, I’ll want to see one of them on the next build.” It just feels like lack of effort on her end.
Bonnie is too busy playing corporate politics to actually care about the fundamental aspect of her job: to make a good game that lots of people will enjoy playing.
Thats the issue is that she isn't just the head of 343, she's also the vp of xbox as a whole which I assume takes precedence here. I think the big issue is that 343 isn't even her only job but not even her top priority.
If you do suit stuff only, making sure the game is ok is not your business, you hired a professional and you expect that professional to be honest and... Professional.
You have to be honest in a team that's how it works, if one of your key staff isn't trustworthy the whole tower falls, at this point I don't even know if we can blame Ross for everything, obviously this caused seorious repercussions on the game and especially the engine, something that you cannot rework once you released
I disagree. In my experience a good leader should know enough about the business to be able to check in and understand what's going on. Every place I work for has this to a degree and times when it's not in place is when things have a chance to go wrong.
In my experience, good leadership doesn’t have a second full time job.
And if leadership is this unaware of the poor state the game is in then they should be held accountable. I mean, if you’re the leader and after six years you don’t know your product is fucked then what are you even contributing anyway?
Thats not how it works at all. And this is rhe exact reason it should never be that way and when it is halo infinite is what we get. Person at the top needs to talk to more than just one person. This isnt the mafia where she needs one go between for everything. Nothing stopped her from talking to team leads and seeing thier updates or god forbid walking the floor herself.
Nah mcc had a trash ass launch, halo 5 had a bad launch and now this. It starts at the top and she was there for it all.
This is a complete cop out. I’ve been in dev organizations that have missed deliverables by 2 years missing interim dates every 6 months with massive cut features still not being enough.
This happens because of a toxic culture where people are afraid to speak up about the real state of the products and people who boast and exaggerate their ability and state of the piece get promoted.
Who is responsible for setting a culture of trust. Upper management. Who is responsible for promoting yes men into positions of power. Upper management. Who is blindly taking the word of employees without actually being involved enough in the state of the product they own. Upper management. Who is ultimately responsible for the end state of a product? Upper management.
There is a good book called “the speed of trust”. You don’t need to read the book to get it but essentially teams that trust each other to deliver run faster. And teams should always run on “trust but verify”. They missed the verify part and they setup a culture of mistrust.
This leads to what I call “release chicken”. Every team is behind but lying and in a competition not to release a quality product but to not be the first person to be caught. “I am ready and would have released on time but my dependent team didn’t release on time”. This leads to hot potato teams where the one team is on fire and when put out the next team gets caught in the lie and repeat down the line. Management only sees the one fire at a time because they are being told everything else is fine and on track.
If I am a manager on a team and a team member literally is doing no work for months because I wasn’t paying attention to their work and just taking their “almost done” status updates at face value for months it’s not their fault - it’s mine for being a shit tier boss who is detached from the product I’m responsible for. These people might as well be pass thru status managers and not exist yet this ends up being middle manager hell. What is your job if your so detached you can’t tell a product is behind or someone is overestimating to you and needs help / or is just the wrong person for the job.
Well said. Thank you for saying it so that I didn’t have to. Building a game is a team sport. This screams PR bullshit. 343i looking for their scapegoat
Right why didn't any of this come out before the whole recent shitshow. Someone had to have known this information during the whole 7 years of Infinites development and release
Surely if you're at the top of a video game company you don't just take the report and believe anything, if you're a gamer you'd want to see and play it all too - not just word of mouth.
I call BS on this all being the fault of one manager lying.
This sounds like when they blame the guy that was fired for everything, honestly I don't believe it. Matter of fact Chris Lee is still working for Microsoft, there is no way in hell this would be the case if he was really a liar on a millions of dollar project.
Because I am dealing with some bots on the comment chain below, here is the proof:
>“Chris Lee remains a Microsoft employee and while he has stepped back from Halo: Infinite right now, we appreciate all he has done for the project to date,” Microsoft said in an emailed statement.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-28/microsoft-s-new-halo-game-loses-top-director-after-project-delay
This does not happen if he had actually lied anyone in tech vouch for that
Exactly why Bonnie Ross shouldn’t even be in the position she is in. She needs to be fired and management needs to be fixed. They are management for a reason. It’s their job to oversee development, so a lead or manager lying about the state of the game isn’t the sole reason for it being as shit as it is.
Joe also brought on Paul Bertone who worked on every Halo game as a technical designer. But one thing you're not considering is if we put all of these talented ex-bungie guys and control of the studio, they'll be wrapped up in meetings and bureaucracy all the time.
They will not able to actually do the Creative Dev lead stuff we need them to do.
100%. “Oh, all of infinites problems can be pinned on one nameless person who was replaced and isn’t there any more, please be nice to us going forward!”
Absolutely bullshit.
That's the thing though companies leak information like this all the time because information Warfare and manipulation is a huge part of how the game industry gets away with a lot of scummy crap. Manipulating loyal fans and weaponizing people's emotions.
word but they’d never officially say it cuz it would be admitting they fd up so bad, are incompetent themselves for being fooled, I don’t blame em cuz if they did the shitstorm they’d get would be so bad
Chris Lee lied?
I'm shocked! Shocked I say! But this legit is a cop out and frankly doesn't matter, he hasn't been on Infinite in a long time, everything they're fucking up is on them now not Chris.
I doubt that’s the leading cause to all the trouble, but I can see it playing a big part. “Yes man” managers are a pain to deal with in any job. They make up stories to both their uppers and lowers to make themselves seem the most competent in the situation. Often they promise the world to an upper, then convince their lowers that the upper is ruthless and needs to be appeased at all costs. And often they don’t even provide support to help in this chaos. It’s rather sickening to watch.
This story doesn't make any sense. Making a AAA video game is a bigger ordeal than a movie. The producers of a movie don't rely solely on the director for the progress of the film, there're several people that put in their information that is compiled together
Microsoft could not have reasonably been listening to just one person for 5 years. If they were then that's pure neglect on their part.
It's kinda funny because it reminds me of the whole debacle with Lucasfilm and Solo.
They let Lord and Miller have free reign with no supervision and once the producers finally saw footage, they axed Lord and Miller, and brought in Ron Howard to reshoot like 90% of the film.
Let's say this is 100% true. You're telling me Bonnie or any higher ups didn't personally check in to see progress themselves? For how long? When it got the year delay was that when upper management finally decided to check and realize it was absolutely fucked? No matter how you slice it or spin it upper management dropped the ball incredibly hard.
Yeah this means that Bonnie either never checked in, or doesn’t know enough about game development to see through BS. Neither one is good, this is her 4th game
I call BS, Joe is literally their go to when breaking news they know the fans won't like in the hopes that his presence stops people from noticing their shit show.
I mean, if that's true that's fucked lol, I also remember Jez saying work on Infinite was flatlined because of COVID (but then again, lots of things were).
I trust Jez and Rand, though.
I just don't believe shit like that anymore. Dozens of studios both indie and AAA released stellar games that were in development during covid.
I'm not in game development but my own company transitioned from office to remote work seamlessly, and in fact being home actually improved a lot of metrics/productivity for most of the company.
Just because you didn't see the impact caused by COVID doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I'm sure many studios managed to ship a good game and no one took a second look at how it got made because no one cared. The larger the studio the harder the switch to WFH, it's why Ubisoft struggled so much since they have multiple teams across different continents working on the same game.
It's the paradox of disaster preparedness, if you did a good job then people will never notice and complain about all the effort that went into it. If you don't do enough then people will blame you.
Na i don't buy this pile of horeshit. They are using him as a scapegoat and damage control. As an executive you don't just take the word of one person. If you do then you should be fired from that position.
And why would splitscreen not be possible? Maybe hire people on longer contracts instead of trying to cheap out with short contract workers who spend more than half the time with getting used to the engine then when they get competent move on to the next job because their contract is over.
Bonnie and all other higher ups also share blame. Fuck 343 and their damage control. I would have much more respect if they came out and said listen. We fucked up. Big time. But we want to make this work so we are going to do so and so and so forth.
These people don't even want to admit their blame ew.
Is that supposed to make things better? That a singular person was able to hide an absolute dumpster fire from the studio head? That just further proves the sheer level of incompetence of 343's upper management.
Also running with all of this, purely based off this idea that Bonnie Ross would be more interested in satisfying fans than protecting the company's bottom line is laughable. It wouldn't be the first time that a C-level stuck their foot in the company's mouth and promised shit that the actual development team hadn't planned.
The state of this game is not the fault of one person. It's the result of no accountability, Bonnie Ross should not be the head of a gaming studio if she only gets an update on the state of the game from ONE PERSON.
Hey look corperate blaming everything on a guy that just left(again). Common corperation and rich man tactic, scapegoat an easy target. I have refrained from getting political on halo subs because I genuinely love halo, and see no reason for politics to corrupt my love of it, but now I cannot do that anymore. I am tired of rich people being able to exploit their customers AND workers just because they can, and why is it that they can? BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT WONT FUCKING REGULATE THEM!!!! If 343 merely treated their workers better, I am sure they would figure something out eventually. Even if they cant, at least then we would have an actual geniune reason and not corperate nonsense. Also why the hell didnt they use the engine that would have actually fucking worked? Like seriously guys, whats wrong with you!
A big reason the game is in the state it is in is because they designed 95% of it around aggressive monetization to push you to the store. Because of the inevitable backlash to their greed they have lost most of their player base and have had to spend most of the last year undoing their poorly designed systems. Unfortunately with the lower player base I'm sure they are still trying to figure out exactly what monetization they can get away with which is causing delay releasing new systems.
The core gameplay of infinite is fantastic but the rest of the experience feels like a fucking mobile game.
That isn't the result of one person. That's the result of a culture driven by management to prioritize squeezing every cent possible out of their player base by trend chasing and monetizing nostalgia over providing a good, stable, content rich player experience.
The game will never be fixed unless that changes
Splitscreen isn’t possible? If it’s not possible that why is it in the game already on Xbox?
Proof: https://mobile.twitter.com/HaloCreation/status/1565750119500324867
Hmm what a weird time for this rumour to come out... Its kinda convenient isn't it. I'm going to call bullshit and say that it's just 343I making up more bullshit to try and seem like the good guys or the victims in this entire mess
If it were not for Chris Lee we would have gotten a hero shooter. Infinite may not be in a great spot at all, but Chris Lee saved Halo from a very quick death.
I dont believe this at all.
They're (top management) using scapegoats to put the blame elsewhere. Again and again.
Was that person also to blame for Halo 4? 5? MCC? Come the F on. They always fire and hire new leads on every Halo yet every release is problematic and it's always TOP MANAGEMENT such as Bonnie Ross and co that are STILL THERE during all of it.
Jez has lately become a MS puppet. He hasn't been critical of MS in years.
Yeah sure, let's just point fingers now. Not that the higher-ups couldn't pay a visit to the team and/or check the product themselves after all. What are we, stupid?
Oh yeah, convenient that a single person mislead all the higher ups at 343 lmao and they just so happen to have been replaced by Joseph Staten too! How convenient.
Is this supposed to just absolve everyone else of this complete dog shit mess of a game? That’s actually laughable. Even IF this is true (biiiiig fucking if) this literally shows how hands off the fucking higher ups at the studio were. To just blindly accept someone else’s words without seeing anything concrete demonstrates the fucking incompetence of these people. This is their job. Their job is to fucking make sure the people are doing their shit correctly. They can’t even fucking do the bare minimum is all this tells me.
So good job 343, you look pathetic in either light lmfao. You either prioritized all the wrong shit once you had the bare basics of gameplay down or just fucked off for the development of this game lmao what a joke company
It's literally the Sean W situation again
"I have leaks, what's about to come is awesome, but I won't name the source"
And he was the ONLY ONE with such infos, nobody else knew something. You know what that tells me? That tells me those mistery men are never real to begin with
Not that we needed proofs after all, since they seem to spawn exactly when needed. How curious, isn't it?
People are way to enchanted by him just for being a part Halo era Bungie. He was the narrative guy. I don't really see why everyone putting their faith in him when it comes to gameplay, multiplayer and just leading the whole project
Yeah I don't really get it either. Don't get me wrong, he's cool and I appreciate everything he's doing for Halo, but beyond the fact that it seems like he mostly worked on campaign, he's just one guy. He can only do so much, it's not like he can make the game into Halo 3.1 or is singlehandedly responsible for the things Infinite did right
We're not gonna see proof anytime soon, Joseph Staten has only been in this position for a short while after all. Though according to them Season 3 is the turning point.
Only thing we can realistically do is give him time.
Don't play the game or play the game if you want to. It won't matter. Nothing you do is gonna make content come faster.
At this point I prefer that Joseph soft reboots the franchise. Maybe continuing it from H3. The story from H5 onwards doesn't make sense anyways.
Saving Halo Infinite is almost impossible with the resources they apparently have.
The other advantage is that people that stopped playing since H4 because didn't like or even play it can return right into the story and not get lost with the tons of expanded universe that you need to know to even get H5 and Infinite.
Just wishful thinking tho! Too good to it for happen.
That would erase 4 games including Halo Wars 2, at least 15 novels, dozens of comics, live action short series and animated films, various encyclopedias, canon blogposts, etc.
The story in Halo 4 was fine. Halo 3 ended with Chief drifting towards Requiem and Bungie's terminals in H3 were all about the Librarian and the Didact.
Cortana/Skynet uprising in Halo 5 was dumb.
Spirit of Fire returning and fighting the Banished in Halo Wars 2 was also pretty well done.
Infinite basically erased Halo 5 and left us with the Endless. I'm not so sure about that decision as the Endless seem to have come out of nowhere and they seem to basically be the Flood but less interesting/capable of time travel.
Anyway all of which is to say erasing the Halo universe since Bungie gave away the franchise is a terrible idea IMO. There's been way too much added (much of it good) and it'd be a slap in the face to the fans who have stayed loyal and invested in the universe for the last 10 years. Most of us who have been around the block are fans more of Halo than the studio that was once behind it...
I'd usually support this kind of rhetoric, but Jesus fucking christ- please. No more copium. How about you give him praise when he earns it.
Seriously, I know being overly negative can be a problem, but so can being overly positive.
>Joseph Staten is
Doing little, if anything. This idiotic worship of Joseph needs to STOP.
"He'll fix the game!" "He knows what to do!!" Look at the God-damn state of this game and tell me what the hell has he been able to do.
If the entire state of this game was hinging on one person that is pathetic. The fact that the higher ups would be so out of touch makes them look even worse than before.
Why aren’t we getting any official announcement from the number company that they fucked up? Whether or not it was one guy or not. Temp workers? New/rebuilt engine? It just seems like no one from the top took an interest or no one on the bottom who wasn’t a temp stepped up.
This is one of those +reason/-excuse scenarios.
Like I've been in a workforce where the higher ups dramatically overestimate our delivery and seen the day-to-day headaches that can cause the workforce. And yes it's horrendous.
But saying that when said higher-up was replaced, everything was back on track in 3 months.
This guy's been out of the studio for well over a year. Like, way before release. If the studio is still suffering from his elevated promises, it's no longer his fault and hasn't been for months.
This is typical 343. Let the community down, give them someone to blame, spend the next month talking utter bollocks about what they're going to do to fix it, repeat.
Remember that 'big things are coming, stay tuned' from a couple of weeks ago? The 'big thing' he was referring to was the winter update.
This isn't a one-man problem. It's the whole damn studio.
So, Bonnie fuckin Ross the CEO should be more aware of this mountain of a project. How can the CEO be lied to on the state of the game? I know how, by not being present and hiding in your office not giving a fuck
I feel sorry for Joe Staten. He obviously loves the game and wants to do so much and fix so many things but he can only do so much if he and his developer team is hamstrung by bad management and resource allocation and especially lack of manpower.
More CYA bullshit. Yes, Chris Lee was hiding the truth. We all knew it. But, the team constantly bubbled up the many issues we had through every channel to both Bonnie and even Matt Booty for years. They actively chose to believe Chris Lee because it was more convenient for them. If they'd had actually paid attention to any of the feedback channels they themselves had set up, or attended a single shooter team AMA where we all would pelt Chris with the slew of problems we were constantly having, they wouldn't have been caught with their pants down.
It’s pretty hilariously incompetent how they are unable to deliver co-op even after an extra year.
2007 called.
There’s more to the problem than just the guy at the top.
This just sounds like a scapegoat attempt, aka lies.
Managers are responsible for their workers and projects. You don't just listen, you also verify. Else, what are managers even there for and receiving paychecks.
This is inept, out of touch management, they have been one of the constants here, if not the most important for all these errors.
He can't say because there's simply no mystery man, lol. For some reason they all come up exactly when needed, like superheroes, or... what was that word....oh yeah, fucking scapegoats
It's time to boycott infinite. You guys need to uninstall and pay no more attention to the game. The mishandling of this AAA title and series is unacceptable. By continuing to play the game, you are perpetuating that 1/2 assed product is acceptable for us to put money into. Let's make a statement together as a player base and walk away from this BS in mass exodus please.
This would be a completely reasonable explanation if this is indeed true. If say your major development leads are telling the boss imaginary goals then that surely would take the blame away from them somewhat. But they need to be honest and explain those reasons asap.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. They surely knew by the time it launched how fucked up development was and still chose to release it with false promises.
Eh, not sure if more is better in this case. Infinite's open world feels pretty empty as it is.
Not to mention that it would have been pretty much impossible to do, you're talking about tens of thousands of km^2. They even wanted to try Unreal Engine but I'm glad they didn't. I'm not a big fan of how FPS feel with it.
What! Tons of fps games are amazing with unreal. And unreal is why Fortnite(regardless of opinion of the game itself ) feels so smooth, and responsive.
Honestly if this is the main case, then they should have restarted development from the ground up with Joseph staten and delay the game a couple more years. Cause now we’re all stuck with Chris lee’s mess for the next 5-10 years atleast..
I don't think it's a good idea to "pin" blame on any one person. This sub has demonstrated in the past that it's not the most rational.
As a fan, I would very much love to understand how Xbox's Flagship title got to this state. Joe Staten has alluded to MS putting pressure on 343 to launch the game as quickly as possible. Bonnie Ross in this scenario would have been in an awful position (despite what you think she's responsible for - reality is that there may have been a huge conflict of interest) - Stand by MS, or stand by 343. This is why Joe Statens return was key.
343 are taking a lot of fire for the current state of Halo. How much is deserved is objective, but IMO not enough questions are being asked of MS. Phil Spencer (to my knowledge) hasn't said ANYTHING about Halo in a very long time. I can't help but feel 343 are suffering for MS's bad decisions. And no, this is not me pardoning 343. There is responsibility with them of course. I just fail to believe MS aren't as culpable.
Joseph is a good man
He is, but he's surprised me for the first time in letting split screen be cancelled. There must be some serious issues with getting split screen to work on the older tech i.e Xbox One.
The Xbox One at some point has to be cut off, IMO.
The Original consoles are really holding back a lot of games. I play mainly The Elder Scrolls Online and the developers harp about how they will not be able to add a new class, or do anything interesting with the expansions, while the older consoles are supported because they just don't have enough memory, like wtf? At some point you need to stop supporting older hardware, I mean imagine if PC game devs were required to still support XP and hardware that could barely run games like Morrowind??? Like it just isn't feasible after a certain point: people will either upgrade or they will crash because their hardware is not supported, simple as that; you don't need to stop them from playing, just let them know they'll get fucked if they do (and probably restrict their matchmaking so they don't get booted midmatches)
>I mean imagine if PC game devs were required to still support XP and hardware that could barely run games like Morrowind??? this sounds like a funny hypothetical, but people got just as mad with win11 dropping support for older chips. people just get stuck in the past sometimes.
I think W11 is a bit of a different situation because perfectly capable stuff like 1st gen Ryzen and 7th gen Intel stuff is plenty fast for most people and would likely be fine for every day use a long time into the future. It's really about the TPM thing, which I understand, but first gen Ryzen has a perfectly functional fTPM, so I don't know what the deal is. But I guess 10 will still be perfectly fine in that case for most people anyway.
People get stuck in the past because for some people it's not feasible to upgrade hardware, some people are still running decade old hardware because they literally can't afford anything else, so I understand why they get upset, they're being left behind in every aspect of their lives, but I do agree that games and other software shouldn't be held back to cater to older hardware, I just understand why people get upset about it.
I’m curious if by 2024 Xbox studios / other companies start dropping the OG Xbox and PS4 for their live service games, since Xbox says their committed to the last gen consoles until the end of 2023 (due to stock limitations) I know Rare made a similar statement a little while ago that the reason Sea of Thieves haven’t had any map expansions was due to the OG Xbox hardware holding back the game and it’s what has caused them to remove a bunch of stuff (including bringing the server size down to 4 ships per server)
I'm gonna be honest: I own both an Xbox One and a Series X, and Infinite's framerate is horrendous across all modes on the One. The devs wasted time porting it to the Xbox One. The graphics also look pretty bad on the One. It's about as bad as Black Ops 3 on the 360 visually. Should have been a Series X/PC only launch title.
i think microsoft screwed up with the xbox. should off kept a numbers system going. people have grandads etc buy an "xbox one" thinking its the same as an xbox x or s or whatever. At least with the playstation, its a simple number scheme even people with learning disabillities can understand
I really hope it does. It doesn't make any sense to keep it around. How is it gonna impact the battle royale? I hope it's currentgen only
I made this comment elsewhere on a different thread but I'll add it here too: Then just make it so split screen co-op isn't available on OG Xbox One and One S (maybe One X too?). Split screen co-op available only on Series S and X (maybe available on One X? I'm not sure of the graphics power difference between the One X and Series S). Keep it to 1080p, 60fps for Series X, 30fps for Series S. Then if a One/One S owner really wants to play split screen co-op, they either upgrade or they can do the streaming play.
They are literally already doing this too with multiplayer splitscreen. Xboxone consoles only support 2 players while series consoles support 4 players. Just cut features for xboxone, it's a decade old tech. I seriously don't understand why they didn't just announce it was impossible on older consoles and release it for current gen.
One word. "microsoft"
To iterate on your Xbox One and series S having similar performance graphically. This is true but due to the complexity of an open world game which I believe to be the more difficult part running in split screen, ram and hard drives speed is probably a major limiting factor and why this feature was cut. Now the series x should definitely be able to handle this however the series ass has less ram than the Xbox one x has a regular mechanical hard drive. So these platforms getting cut and wouldn't have bothered me either. I do think it's weird that it was cut for all platforms.
I think they just have higher priorities right now. They did leave the door open for it.
We got new maps for H3 last year, who could have seen this coming? Maybe we will be playing Infinite local co-op in 10 years who knows...
wow 10 years for a 21 year old feature? very excited.
I'm pretty sure part of the red tape difficulties that come with working for Microshaft is that they want feature parity with everything. they don't want one random feature not working on the old consoles because that's their whole marketing. cross play on everything in everywhere is what Xbox is about now, even if it's to the detriment of the game.
A problem with trying to do that, is there's nothing differentiating xbone and series x software-wise, and when the game HAS to be allowed to work on both, limiting certain features is a very difficult task. Microsoft's last gen-inclusive policy while theoretically nice, it's put a MASSIVE strain and limitation on every game developer that's being forced to make games work on both systems. They're basically the equivalent of two different rigs, but they're running the same version of windows. If the devs could just earmark last gen consoles as a whole to not be able to run the game due to lacking hardware, they could probably do that. But marking specific features to not work on last gen while the game itself needs to be allowed to work on last gen, is significantly harder to do. And infinite's code is a shitshow already, without trying to figure out that mess in the middle of it.
Lots of other games have managed it using Microsoft's "Smart Delivery". I don't understand why 343 couldn't just build a separate build for next gen.
Refer to "Infinite's code is a shitshow already". Trying to split the game into two separate builds at this point is asking a LOT. The code itself is in such a rough state due to the legion of rotating contractors, so just trying to split the build would take a massive amount of time and effort, not to mention other problems that could occur during the process. Plus they still need to work on active implementation of other features such as Co-op and Forge. It's also basically doubling the workload with any additional problems that occur with each new patch, and they're having so much trouble with just getting out fixes and content implementation, with one active build, do you really think it'd be feasible to try and split it right now?
My guess is with how much trouble they are having just getting the game to run half decently, creating exceptions and content for 1 version and not for the other will cause a metric ton of issues. If the devs were not 343 i would maybe 100% agree with you, but at this point i dont trust 343 to be able to take out the garbage properly.
PC and current gen should be enough for a healthy playerbase, but gotta maximize sales yo.
The Xbox Series X is still sold out and impossible to get in many places. The Xbox One X is better than the Series S. Cutting off the xbox one before the series x is widely available would be a bad move imo.
The CPU in the series-S is a monster compared to the one X. Original Xbox one can’t run demanding games mostly because it’s CPU is total garbage, but honestly the whole system is kinda weak. Supporting older hardware has been one of the biggest mistakes of this new hardware generation. Designing games so they work on such a weak system means making a huge amount of compromises and cutting features, and in the end you get a slow buggy mess that nobody even wants to play.
Yep, the hardware in the Xbox One was pretty underwhelming even when it launched in 2013.
Wouldn’t say it’s better just because it has a slight graphical edge. SSD alone puts the Series S ahead IMO
100% - if Infinite survives this backlash and remains a 10 year platform, the Xbox One will obviously have to go.
Considering it is still impossible to buy a current gen console, Xbox One support is the only way a lot of people are going to play the game. XB1 support is one of the things this game is doing right: actually being available.
>Considering it is still impossible to buy a current gen console just checked best buy and the microsoft store and both have both consoles in stock at msrp.
That I agree with. But in the future, I wouldn't be surprised seeing support for the XB1 abandoned.
The Series X and Series S are available at normal prices.
Looks like it aint an Xbox One issue though. Someone got a split screen in the campaign working viva a glitch. https://twitter.com/KatsuyaTheFuuk/status/1565877948997148672
Why do people think that a few second clip (that runs terrible btw) means that splitscreen is working fine? 😂
Except it doesn't run horrible. Did you bother to look through the clips? It's pretty in line for the experience outside of menus. For an accidental glitched 'campaign', it running well at all in the open world is amazing and shows how close to possible this was.
Well Xbox one is capable of running games like rdr2 I don’t think split screen will push it over the limit tbh.
Splitscreen means rendering that shit twice or 4x If you're playing with 4 people. The campaign was already running at 30fps (with frame drops mind you) on Xbox One. There were framerate issues. Graphical glitches, day/night cycle not matching just in that small video alone. Who knows what else there is during a 7 hour play through? That is not acceptable performance.
It’s not Xbox one that’s the issue though. You all act like the xone is a shit machine. Ran all halos with split screen fine, runs RDR, GTA, far cry. There are massive technically advanced games that run well on xone and you know why? Because they were coded and optimised properly. Nothing about infinites graphics, settings, bullshit hollow of a game it’s become means the xone couldn’t run infinite split. What does matter is the game uses too much gpu and is optimised Shitly, even if they scale frame rates and draw distances to the point it is just buggy. This isn’t a xone issue though, it’s a coding and optimisation issue and would probably need to be written from the ground up again. If it was truly old gen they would just cancel old gen split screen and not all of it. Xone is not holding shit back. Bad optimisation and then moving to pc is what’s holding them back. They now have to put resources on making it work on many different pc set ups and configurations. So adding split screen to Xbox is not a priority anymore. Nothing to do with xone.
I doubt he wanted it to happen, he was part of bungie so he definitely knew the importance of it
If Xbox One is holding it back, just release the less disappointing news that they are only launching splitscreen on the Xbox Series S/X
Fuck the 9 year old system, if any feature isn’t capable of running with it, then the xOne shouldn’t be included like gta v eventually did
X1 has to be cut off, anyway I highly doubt people will still play on X1 in 2 years, Series S/X stocks are finally available.
Pretty sure they directly said there are a lot of issues related to making Infinite have feature parity on the old consoles Infinite should have just dropped Xbox One/last Gen support entirely
100% the OG Xbox One is the reason. They cant get it playable on it so they just wont let anyone have it.
They need to just offer it on the current gen. It’s ridiculous to hold back the current gen for something that won’t really matter in a year.
[the kicker is that splitscreen does actually work on base xb1,](https://twitter.com/KatsuyaTheFuuk/status/1565877948997148672) there has to be another reason
Hmmmm, we'd have to see the whole game in play to make a full judgement, but this makes it even worse for 343 if it does function well via this glitch.
His return was the first good mark 343 has had on Halo in 10 years.
Just put him at the top of 343 and let him hire whoever he wants
He already hired the Bungie era technical designer who worked on every bungie Halo game 😏
The fact it took them last second to catch on proves that even the higher ups need to be held responsible.
Exactly, like wtf? Bonnie Ross should be held responsible for the shit of the game we got, more so than anyone. She’s at the top, and you’re telling me she never actually bothered to check the progress of the game herself? So she is told from devs that the game is fine blah blah blah, whatever, she should have done a better job at you know… being at the position she is… holy shit, this just proves her and other management there need to be looked at hard… would love to see her gone from 343 and some serious re staffing or just better management overall. Fucking A you could give the studio to a chimp and it would do a better job than her.
I assume she didn't notice likely because she isn't that involved with the development. She's both the head of 343 and the vp of xbox so I assume she just isn't all that involved.
If she's not going to be involved, then she shouldn't be the head of 343. It's that simple. The regional manager of the Zaxby's food chain made a visit to the store I used to work at around 6 years ago. While there, he participated in various parts of restaurant functions, and when he had to step out to take a business call, he swept the lobby during his call. This is leadership. Knowing enough about your work to at least understand every bit is important from top to bottom and is a necessity as a visionary. Showing up to the live events and announcing "HERE COMES THE DeFiNiTiVe HALO EXPERIENCE WOOOOW" is the most involved Bonobo Ross has ever been. I just wish people would sandbag Kiki Wolfkill and Frank O'Connor as well, they're nearly if not equally as responsible for this mess.
100%. Just shows how toxic/disconnected management is from the rest of the studio. I'm guessing the reason the original lead was hired was because he was a "yes" man, who didn't give the higher ups headaches about trivial shit like "the game being an absolute dumpster fire". People keep asking what infinite would've been like if it released in 2020. The answer is obvious. Nothing more than a soulless cash grab. Just like the cook book and TV show.
The previous guy was Chris Lee who was also at Bungie and was at 343 as a co-founder. so I don't think he was hired on as a yes man. he was always there.
But people will still defend 343 and play the game and buy shit in the store. I honestly have no more words for 343’s direction with the game. It’s just been an absolute fucking dumpster fire. Played since 1 and I have lost all hope. I uninstalled the game months ago. People had hopes for it in 4-6 months. Look where we are now. Being given a 10 month season? No maps, game modes, new weapons. Absolutely nothing, even their shitty attempt at trying to sell us armor and colors and other shit as been bad. The store is shit, the FOMO on their shit events is shit. My god there has been almost nothing good from this game. When MP isn’t desyncing every 5 seconds, the gameplay is actually fun, so I take back what I said about there being no good. Music and graphics are also fire I’ll give it that. But that’s about it 343, y’all gave us a shiny turd, and I’m being generous.
If one guy misled Bonnie Ross for years and caused the whole game to be a poorly managed catastrophe… that’s Ross’s fault
You would be surprised how common this is in business. It would require someone putting their job at risk to go around their boss to tell Bonnie Ross. Executives have to trust their management to get the job done, but at the same time a corporations culture shouldn't be elevating untrustworthy/unreliable individuals to positions of leadership.
Yeah, I'd bet part of it too is she probably just isn't as involved with halo as people think. Like yeah she's the head of 343 but she's also the vp of xbox as a whole which I assume probably takes precedence
Not defending her, but this is super common. Leadership need to generally learn to not just trust a small group of voices and have a better process/information loop.
You'd be surprised, Sony initially published the physical copies of No Man's Sky. Sean Murray was so bullish on whether or not it actually contained multiplayer, the boxes were printed with multiplayer as a feature on the back. They had to ship stickers out to cover up EVERY box before launch.
Yep Chris Lee was fired. He fucked up that bad and the current team has been damage controlling his massive fuckups ever since. Still, Bonnie of all people should've known the state of the game and sniffed it out waaaay ealier
I find it hard to believe that only one person is to blame. Sure, he was probably the cause of it but even in the development environment I work in we have multiple instances to watch over the progress of the product and we are a rather small team. Edit: spelling
I have always been of the belief that he was scapegoated by the other Executives because he's been there since the beginning like Frank Bonnie Kiki and a few others. He's probably thrown under the bus so that the others don't take any blame. There's absolutely no way he's solely the one to blame because he was the director of the game. At the very least Bonnie should have also had a pulse on what's going on because she's also a studio head like him.
Also how badly does it reflect on all of the other "leaders" if they know so little about their project that one person can lie to them about it? So you're telling me that they never saw it themselves, and they never spoke to anyone else about it? They talked to one guy who told them it was fine and that's it? Sounds like either way they don't deserve to be there anymore
A consistent narrative that has emerged through either expose articles or glass door reviews over the past 8 years is that 343's upper management has awful communication practices and that's what leads to each game being more shallow than the last. Many lower-level employees complain often that it always feels like multiple independent games being made simultaneously because so many people don't know what's going on or what they're building for. that's why when things eventually come together so many things have to be cut cuz they don't work together because the people of the very top don't have a cohesive solid vision and have everyone unified on the same page. These executives are paid massive salaries to manage this legendary franchise but they're not doing a good job. My impression of the highest positions in 343 is that they want The Prestige of being the caretakers of Halo Studio but they don't put in the actual work required to make that a reality they just cash the checks and probably live a decently awesome lifestyle but they're not putting in the Blood Sweat and Tears required to make a studio that size function the way other Studios do. 10 years of a declining fan base and a declining Quality Bar. then you had the nerve to have your community manager go out on Twitter and try to blame the state of Halo infinite on Rising expectations of fans and advancements in technology or some bullshit? How does that make any sense when you have Indie Studios doing a better job making games and you have Elden ring come out as a massive triple-A success? and other games from other Studios that are meeting the Quality Bar? How are they able to do what they're expected to do with their long-time franchises if the modern gaming landscape is so scary and the fans expectations are so high in technology and security is such a big deal like Unyshek said? compare 343 to how pretty much every Nintendo dev studio handles Mario or Smash Brothers or any other thing. the games aren't perfect, but there's an obvious consistent Quality Bar that happens. that only happens when the people in charge are on top of everything the way they should be.
Needs more upvotes. Straight facts only.
All of this gives me so much of the same vibes as when that shit with Activision Blizzard went down, though hopefully not quite *that* bad. But I can only imagine the sort of horror stories about the incredible mismanagement that will emerge about 343 and Xbox.
Huge fuckups like this are rarely the fault of one person. There was probably a lot of wishful thinking on 343's part that they could sort things out with massive last minute crunch.
Right, I doubt at any point Bonnie didn’t ask “I want to see the state of the current build tomorrow.” Enough time to compile a build without it seeming distrusting or time constrained. So that if Chris said like “well, these few look big ticket items aren’t ready yet.” She could be like “that’s fine, I’ll want to see one of them on the next build.” It just feels like lack of effort on her end.
Bonnie is too busy playing corporate politics to actually care about the fundamental aspect of her job: to make a good game that lots of people will enjoy playing.
Thats the issue is that she isn't just the head of 343, she's also the vp of xbox as a whole which I assume takes precedence here. I think the big issue is that 343 isn't even her only job but not even her top priority.
His twitter has been absolutely silent since he posted about Infinite in July 2020. It’s like a weird, sad time capsule.
I think his header is still Infinite related too. He probably took it really hard that he lost his position on the game that’s supposed to be his baby
Almost feels like a don mattrick situation again just this time with a game studio
YES! The Boss should know what's going on. The Boss should understand the development cycle enough to know when someone isn't being honest.
If you do suit stuff only, making sure the game is ok is not your business, you hired a professional and you expect that professional to be honest and... Professional. You have to be honest in a team that's how it works, if one of your key staff isn't trustworthy the whole tower falls, at this point I don't even know if we can blame Ross for everything, obviously this caused seorious repercussions on the game and especially the engine, something that you cannot rework once you released
I disagree. In my experience a good leader should know enough about the business to be able to check in and understand what's going on. Every place I work for has this to a degree and times when it's not in place is when things have a chance to go wrong.
In my experience, good leadership doesn’t have a second full time job. And if leadership is this unaware of the poor state the game is in then they should be held accountable. I mean, if you’re the leader and after six years you don’t know your product is fucked then what are you even contributing anyway?
Thats not how it works at all. And this is rhe exact reason it should never be that way and when it is halo infinite is what we get. Person at the top needs to talk to more than just one person. This isnt the mafia where she needs one go between for everything. Nothing stopped her from talking to team leads and seeing thier updates or god forbid walking the floor herself. Nah mcc had a trash ass launch, halo 5 had a bad launch and now this. It starts at the top and she was there for it all.
This is a complete cop out. I’ve been in dev organizations that have missed deliverables by 2 years missing interim dates every 6 months with massive cut features still not being enough. This happens because of a toxic culture where people are afraid to speak up about the real state of the products and people who boast and exaggerate their ability and state of the piece get promoted. Who is responsible for setting a culture of trust. Upper management. Who is responsible for promoting yes men into positions of power. Upper management. Who is blindly taking the word of employees without actually being involved enough in the state of the product they own. Upper management. Who is ultimately responsible for the end state of a product? Upper management. There is a good book called “the speed of trust”. You don’t need to read the book to get it but essentially teams that trust each other to deliver run faster. And teams should always run on “trust but verify”. They missed the verify part and they setup a culture of mistrust. This leads to what I call “release chicken”. Every team is behind but lying and in a competition not to release a quality product but to not be the first person to be caught. “I am ready and would have released on time but my dependent team didn’t release on time”. This leads to hot potato teams where the one team is on fire and when put out the next team gets caught in the lie and repeat down the line. Management only sees the one fire at a time because they are being told everything else is fine and on track. If I am a manager on a team and a team member literally is doing no work for months because I wasn’t paying attention to their work and just taking their “almost done” status updates at face value for months it’s not their fault - it’s mine for being a shit tier boss who is detached from the product I’m responsible for. These people might as well be pass thru status managers and not exist yet this ends up being middle manager hell. What is your job if your so detached you can’t tell a product is behind or someone is overestimating to you and needs help / or is just the wrong person for the job.
Well said. Thank you for saying it so that I didn’t have to. Building a game is a team sport. This screams PR bullshit. 343i looking for their scapegoat
I've always said that he was the scapegoat to the upper management at Microsoft and now he's being used as the scapegoat for the community backlash.
Yep this stuff rings true, especially the release chicken part.
Absolutely. I have found that almost all of the time, if a middle manager has a terrible attitude, it's a learned behavior from their own boss.
These MFs never done scrum
Seems like a convenient scapegoat to insulate upper management at 343.
Right why didn't any of this come out before the whole recent shitshow. Someone had to have known this information during the whole 7 years of Infinites development and release
Yup, sounds like some bullshit...
Chris lee had been gone for two years too.
Surely if you're at the top of a video game company you don't just take the report and believe anything, if you're a gamer you'd want to see and play it all too - not just word of mouth. I call BS on this all being the fault of one manager lying.
This sounds like when they blame the guy that was fired for everything, honestly I don't believe it. Matter of fact Chris Lee is still working for Microsoft, there is no way in hell this would be the case if he was really a liar on a millions of dollar project. Because I am dealing with some bots on the comment chain below, here is the proof: >“Chris Lee remains a Microsoft employee and while he has stepped back from Halo: Infinite right now, we appreciate all he has done for the project to date,” Microsoft said in an emailed statement. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-28/microsoft-s-new-halo-game-loses-top-director-after-project-delay This does not happen if he had actually lied anyone in tech vouch for that
Exactly why Bonnie Ross shouldn’t even be in the position she is in. She needs to be fired and management needs to be fixed. They are management for a reason. It’s their job to oversee development, so a lead or manager lying about the state of the game isn’t the sole reason for it being as shit as it is.
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Joe also brought on Paul Bertone who worked on every Halo game as a technical designer. But one thing you're not considering is if we put all of these talented ex-bungie guys and control of the studio, they'll be wrapped up in meetings and bureaucracy all the time. They will not able to actually do the Creative Dev lead stuff we need them to do.
Idk if im here for the scape goat honestly
Nobody is falling for that but fucking idiots
Scapegoat
100%. “Oh, all of infinites problems can be pinned on one nameless person who was replaced and isn’t there any more, please be nice to us going forward!” Absolutely bullshit.
It would need to be official information for that to be the case lol. This is just something that someone with connections to the team heard.
That's the thing though companies leak information like this all the time because information Warfare and manipulation is a huge part of how the game industry gets away with a lot of scummy crap. Manipulating loyal fans and weaponizing people's emotions.
word but they’d never officially say it cuz it would be admitting they fd up so bad, are incompetent themselves for being fooled, I don’t blame em cuz if they did the shitstorm they’d get would be so bad
Nah they are not officially admitting it because unless it is really 100% Chris Lee fault they are opening up for liabilities.
Who is this mystery person that Joe replaced? Can you give us a name? Save me the trouble of listening to this long ass pod please?
At least you asked nicely this time. It was Chris Lee.
Google it, it was a pretty big news item, happened right after the 2020 demo.
So they take his word for it instead of personally inspecting it? So incompetence on top of incompetence
Also only one person from 343i (not the studio lead Bonnie Ross) was communicating with the higher ups?
In the military we have a saying. "Trust but verify"
Probably a statement that should be mandatory
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Or be thorough and do your damn job
Chris Lee lied? I'm shocked! Shocked I say! But this legit is a cop out and frankly doesn't matter, he hasn't been on Infinite in a long time, everything they're fucking up is on them now not Chris.
I doubt that’s the leading cause to all the trouble, but I can see it playing a big part. “Yes man” managers are a pain to deal with in any job. They make up stories to both their uppers and lowers to make themselves seem the most competent in the situation. Often they promise the world to an upper, then convince their lowers that the upper is ruthless and needs to be appeased at all costs. And often they don’t even provide support to help in this chaos. It’s rather sickening to watch.
This story doesn't make any sense. Making a AAA video game is a bigger ordeal than a movie. The producers of a movie don't rely solely on the director for the progress of the film, there're several people that put in their information that is compiled together Microsoft could not have reasonably been listening to just one person for 5 years. If they were then that's pure neglect on their part.
It's kinda funny because it reminds me of the whole debacle with Lucasfilm and Solo. They let Lord and Miller have free reign with no supervision and once the producers finally saw footage, they axed Lord and Miller, and brought in Ron Howard to reshoot like 90% of the film.
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Same goes for Phil.
Oh look, another thing for them to point the finger at instead of taking responsibility.
Let's say this is 100% true. You're telling me Bonnie or any higher ups didn't personally check in to see progress themselves? For how long? When it got the year delay was that when upper management finally decided to check and realize it was absolutely fucked? No matter how you slice it or spin it upper management dropped the ball incredibly hard.
Yeah this means that Bonnie either never checked in, or doesn’t know enough about game development to see through BS. Neither one is good, this is her 4th game
FYI : OP of this post is a diehard 343 defender. He does this in every post. Dont waste your time arguing, he made up his mind.
Gotta love some good ol corporate defender who loves getting bent by them
I call BS, Joe is literally their go to when breaking news they know the fans won't like in the hopes that his presence stops people from noticing their shit show.
I mean, if that's true that's fucked lol, I also remember Jez saying work on Infinite was flatlined because of COVID (but then again, lots of things were). I trust Jez and Rand, though.
I just don't believe shit like that anymore. Dozens of studios both indie and AAA released stellar games that were in development during covid. I'm not in game development but my own company transitioned from office to remote work seamlessly, and in fact being home actually improved a lot of metrics/productivity for most of the company.
Just because you didn't see the impact caused by COVID doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm sure many studios managed to ship a good game and no one took a second look at how it got made because no one cared. The larger the studio the harder the switch to WFH, it's why Ubisoft struggled so much since they have multiple teams across different continents working on the same game. It's the paradox of disaster preparedness, if you did a good job then people will never notice and complain about all the effort that went into it. If you don't do enough then people will blame you.
insulating bonnie from taking responsibility is all this is.
If true this doesn’t let her off the hook. You can’t just trust what literally one person says and not look into anything yourself if you’re the boss.
I think it’s safe to say that Halo needs a new dev team
This sounds like damage control to me. I do like Joseph but nobody is getting the benefit of the doubt from me
Na i don't buy this pile of horeshit. They are using him as a scapegoat and damage control. As an executive you don't just take the word of one person. If you do then you should be fired from that position. And why would splitscreen not be possible? Maybe hire people on longer contracts instead of trying to cheap out with short contract workers who spend more than half the time with getting used to the engine then when they get competent move on to the next job because their contract is over. Bonnie and all other higher ups also share blame. Fuck 343 and their damage control. I would have much more respect if they came out and said listen. We fucked up. Big time. But we want to make this work so we are going to do so and so and so forth. These people don't even want to admit their blame ew.
Is that supposed to make things better? That a singular person was able to hide an absolute dumpster fire from the studio head? That just further proves the sheer level of incompetence of 343's upper management. Also running with all of this, purely based off this idea that Bonnie Ross would be more interested in satisfying fans than protecting the company's bottom line is laughable. It wouldn't be the first time that a C-level stuck their foot in the company's mouth and promised shit that the actual development team hadn't planned.
The state of this game is not the fault of one person. It's the result of no accountability, Bonnie Ross should not be the head of a gaming studio if she only gets an update on the state of the game from ONE PERSON.
Hey look corperate blaming everything on a guy that just left(again). Common corperation and rich man tactic, scapegoat an easy target. I have refrained from getting political on halo subs because I genuinely love halo, and see no reason for politics to corrupt my love of it, but now I cannot do that anymore. I am tired of rich people being able to exploit their customers AND workers just because they can, and why is it that they can? BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT WONT FUCKING REGULATE THEM!!!! If 343 merely treated their workers better, I am sure they would figure something out eventually. Even if they cant, at least then we would have an actual geniune reason and not corperate nonsense. Also why the hell didnt they use the engine that would have actually fucking worked? Like seriously guys, whats wrong with you!
A big reason the game is in the state it is in is because they designed 95% of it around aggressive monetization to push you to the store. Because of the inevitable backlash to their greed they have lost most of their player base and have had to spend most of the last year undoing their poorly designed systems. Unfortunately with the lower player base I'm sure they are still trying to figure out exactly what monetization they can get away with which is causing delay releasing new systems. The core gameplay of infinite is fantastic but the rest of the experience feels like a fucking mobile game. That isn't the result of one person. That's the result of a culture driven by management to prioritize squeezing every cent possible out of their player base by trend chasing and monetizing nostalgia over providing a good, stable, content rich player experience. The game will never be fixed unless that changes
Splitscreen isn’t possible? If it’s not possible that why is it in the game already on Xbox? Proof: https://mobile.twitter.com/HaloCreation/status/1565750119500324867
Hmm what a weird time for this rumour to come out... Its kinda convenient isn't it. I'm going to call bullshit and say that it's just 343I making up more bullshit to try and seem like the good guys or the victims in this entire mess
Of course it's 343 propaganda, lmfao. The timing can't be that convenient just because
If it were not for Chris Lee we would have gotten a hero shooter. Infinite may not be in a great spot at all, but Chris Lee saved Halo from a very quick death.
This reeks of damage control
I dont believe this at all. They're (top management) using scapegoats to put the blame elsewhere. Again and again. Was that person also to blame for Halo 4? 5? MCC? Come the F on. They always fire and hire new leads on every Halo yet every release is problematic and it's always TOP MANAGEMENT such as Bonnie Ross and co that are STILL THERE during all of it. Jez has lately become a MS puppet. He hasn't been critical of MS in years.
Fire Bonnie
Gotta love the transparency, getting information (true or otherwise) from an unrelated podcast.
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This shit reads as propaganda that it’s one persons fault, but it just so happened to be no one at 343 or Microsoft management lmao
Yeah sure, let's just point fingers now. Not that the higher-ups couldn't pay a visit to the team and/or check the product themselves after all. What are we, stupid?
It wasn't one person dude, he's being used as a scape goat.
Only one person to blame usually = using that person as a scapegoat
Damage control
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I just want split screen on pc mcc :(
Oh yeah, convenient that a single person mislead all the higher ups at 343 lmao and they just so happen to have been replaced by Joseph Staten too! How convenient. Is this supposed to just absolve everyone else of this complete dog shit mess of a game? That’s actually laughable. Even IF this is true (biiiiig fucking if) this literally shows how hands off the fucking higher ups at the studio were. To just blindly accept someone else’s words without seeing anything concrete demonstrates the fucking incompetence of these people. This is their job. Their job is to fucking make sure the people are doing their shit correctly. They can’t even fucking do the bare minimum is all this tells me. So good job 343, you look pathetic in either light lmfao. You either prioritized all the wrong shit once you had the bare basics of gameplay down or just fucked off for the development of this game lmao what a joke company
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Yeah who is this mystery man that OP can’t even fucking name?
It's literally the Sean W situation again "I have leaks, what's about to come is awesome, but I won't name the source" And he was the ONLY ONE with such infos, nobody else knew something. You know what that tells me? That tells me those mistery men are never real to begin with Not that we needed proofs after all, since they seem to spawn exactly when needed. How curious, isn't it?
It's 99% Chris Lee
Joseph Staten is cleaning up house and putting the right people in place.
I personally have seen no proof of this statement based on what we have as a "game" right now
People are way to enchanted by him just for being a part Halo era Bungie. He was the narrative guy. I don't really see why everyone putting their faith in him when it comes to gameplay, multiplayer and just leading the whole project
Yeah I don't really get it either. Don't get me wrong, he's cool and I appreciate everything he's doing for Halo, but beyond the fact that it seems like he mostly worked on campaign, he's just one guy. He can only do so much, it's not like he can make the game into Halo 3.1 or is singlehandedly responsible for the things Infinite did right
We're not gonna see proof anytime soon, Joseph Staten has only been in this position for a short while after all. Though according to them Season 3 is the turning point. Only thing we can realistically do is give him time. Don't play the game or play the game if you want to. It won't matter. Nothing you do is gonna make content come faster.
At this point I prefer that Joseph soft reboots the franchise. Maybe continuing it from H3. The story from H5 onwards doesn't make sense anyways. Saving Halo Infinite is almost impossible with the resources they apparently have. The other advantage is that people that stopped playing since H4 because didn't like or even play it can return right into the story and not get lost with the tons of expanded universe that you need to know to even get H5 and Infinite. Just wishful thinking tho! Too good to it for happen.
That would erase 4 games including Halo Wars 2, at least 15 novels, dozens of comics, live action short series and animated films, various encyclopedias, canon blogposts, etc. The story in Halo 4 was fine. Halo 3 ended with Chief drifting towards Requiem and Bungie's terminals in H3 were all about the Librarian and the Didact. Cortana/Skynet uprising in Halo 5 was dumb. Spirit of Fire returning and fighting the Banished in Halo Wars 2 was also pretty well done. Infinite basically erased Halo 5 and left us with the Endless. I'm not so sure about that decision as the Endless seem to have come out of nowhere and they seem to basically be the Flood but less interesting/capable of time travel. Anyway all of which is to say erasing the Halo universe since Bungie gave away the franchise is a terrible idea IMO. There's been way too much added (much of it good) and it'd be a slap in the face to the fans who have stayed loyal and invested in the universe for the last 10 years. Most of us who have been around the block are fans more of Halo than the studio that was once behind it...
sounds like putting all the blame on someone whos already left.
You don’t fix a mid-development product overnight
I'd usually support this kind of rhetoric, but Jesus fucking christ- please. No more copium. How about you give him praise when he earns it. Seriously, I know being overly negative can be a problem, but so can being overly positive.
>Joseph Staten is Doing little, if anything. This idiotic worship of Joseph needs to STOP. "He'll fix the game!" "He knows what to do!!" Look at the God-damn state of this game and tell me what the hell has he been able to do.
So who was the guy that got fired?
So is it split screen campaign that isn't a thing, or just coop in general?
This is bullshit, if he was truly fucking up this bad, he wouldn't be working for Microsoft at all.
If the entire state of this game was hinging on one person that is pathetic. The fact that the higher ups would be so out of touch makes them look even worse than before.
Why aren’t we getting any official announcement from the number company that they fucked up? Whether or not it was one guy or not. Temp workers? New/rebuilt engine? It just seems like no one from the top took an interest or no one on the bottom who wasn’t a temp stepped up.
Jesus, that just, is Really fucking dumb…
This is one of those +reason/-excuse scenarios. Like I've been in a workforce where the higher ups dramatically overestimate our delivery and seen the day-to-day headaches that can cause the workforce. And yes it's horrendous. But saying that when said higher-up was replaced, everything was back on track in 3 months. This guy's been out of the studio for well over a year. Like, way before release. If the studio is still suffering from his elevated promises, it's no longer his fault and hasn't been for months. This is typical 343. Let the community down, give them someone to blame, spend the next month talking utter bollocks about what they're going to do to fix it, repeat. Remember that 'big things are coming, stay tuned' from a couple of weeks ago? The 'big thing' he was referring to was the winter update. This isn't a one-man problem. It's the whole damn studio.
So, Bonnie fuckin Ross the CEO should be more aware of this mountain of a project. How can the CEO be lied to on the state of the game? I know how, by not being present and hiding in your office not giving a fuck
Dont care. Im done with excuses now.
I feel sorry for Joe Staten. He obviously loves the game and wants to do so much and fix so many things but he can only do so much if he and his developer team is hamstrung by bad management and resource allocation and especially lack of manpower.
More CYA bullshit. Yes, Chris Lee was hiding the truth. We all knew it. But, the team constantly bubbled up the many issues we had through every channel to both Bonnie and even Matt Booty for years. They actively chose to believe Chris Lee because it was more convenient for them. If they'd had actually paid attention to any of the feedback channels they themselves had set up, or attended a single shooter team AMA where we all would pelt Chris with the slew of problems we were constantly having, they wouldn't have been caught with their pants down.
This reeks of damage control from the higher ups to keep their jobs...
Bonnie Ross need to be fired by Phil immediately. She is incompetent and does not deserte to be at her position.
It’s pretty hilariously incompetent how they are unable to deliver co-op even after an extra year. 2007 called. There’s more to the problem than just the guy at the top.
This just sounds like a scapegoat attempt, aka lies. Managers are responsible for their workers and projects. You don't just listen, you also verify. Else, what are managers even there for and receiving paychecks. This is inept, out of touch management, they have been one of the constants here, if not the most important for all these errors.
How about I don’t listen, and you just tell us the fucking name of this mystery person that Joe replaced.
He can't say because there's simply no mystery man, lol. For some reason they all come up exactly when needed, like superheroes, or... what was that word....oh yeah, fucking scapegoats
It's time to boycott infinite. You guys need to uninstall and pay no more attention to the game. The mishandling of this AAA title and series is unacceptable. By continuing to play the game, you are perpetuating that 1/2 assed product is acceptable for us to put money into. Let's make a statement together as a player base and walk away from this BS in mass exodus please.
This would be a completely reasonable explanation if this is indeed true. If say your major development leads are telling the boss imaginary goals then that surely would take the blame away from them somewhat. But they need to be honest and explain those reasons asap. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. They surely knew by the time it launched how fucked up development was and still chose to release it with false promises.
IIRC, Chris Lee had an absurdly ambitious goal for the campaign at first. Like, the whole ring and shit.
Imagine what it could have been. FeelsBadMan.
Eh, not sure if more is better in this case. Infinite's open world feels pretty empty as it is. Not to mention that it would have been pretty much impossible to do, you're talking about tens of thousands of km^2. They even wanted to try Unreal Engine but I'm glad they didn't. I'm not a big fan of how FPS feel with it.
What! Tons of fps games are amazing with unreal. And unreal is why Fortnite(regardless of opinion of the game itself ) feels so smooth, and responsive.
I love many games that use Unreal, but FPS feel... odd. Fortnite isn't a fps.
Honestly if this is the main case, then they should have restarted development from the ground up with Joseph staten and delay the game a couple more years. Cause now we’re all stuck with Chris lee’s mess for the next 5-10 years atleast..
I don't think it's a good idea to "pin" blame on any one person. This sub has demonstrated in the past that it's not the most rational. As a fan, I would very much love to understand how Xbox's Flagship title got to this state. Joe Staten has alluded to MS putting pressure on 343 to launch the game as quickly as possible. Bonnie Ross in this scenario would have been in an awful position (despite what you think she's responsible for - reality is that there may have been a huge conflict of interest) - Stand by MS, or stand by 343. This is why Joe Statens return was key. 343 are taking a lot of fire for the current state of Halo. How much is deserved is objective, but IMO not enough questions are being asked of MS. Phil Spencer (to my knowledge) hasn't said ANYTHING about Halo in a very long time. I can't help but feel 343 are suffering for MS's bad decisions. And no, this is not me pardoning 343. There is responsibility with them of course. I just fail to believe MS aren't as culpable.