Halo Director: 'Master Chief Collection is Definitely a Black Eye for us' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 May 2015 / 5,125 Views
Halo: The Master Chief Collection has been plagued with matchmaking problems ever since it launched back in November. Halo Franchise Development Director Frank O'Connor considers the game a 'black eye' for developer 343 Industries.
Here is the complete quote from O'Connor:
"Halo: The Master Chief Collection is definitely a black eye for us. We’re not going to rest on our laurels or hide from the mistakes we made. However, I will say that the nature of The Master Chief Collection - you’ve got five different game engines, you’ve got five different studios working on it, you’ve got 343 working on putting it all together - the footprint and complexity was outrageous.
To be perfectly honest, there were a lot of things that happened when we got it into a retail environment that we simply didn’t see in a test environment, so that’s what really caught us by surprise. We’ve been sort of scrambling to get it first in a playable stage and now we’re going to get it in a polished stage, so that people are getting what they deserved in the first place. We’re never going to back away from that or shy away from that.
However, Halo 5 is being made by a completely different team. It’s a singular product. It was built from the ground up for this new technology, rather than being sort of dragged kicking and screaming from 2001 and forced and shoehorned into a 2014 console. So the problem spaces are still very challenging but they’re radically different. I think the beta is already a decent first step, in a retail environment, showing that we don’t have the same problems."
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Team that worked on the MCC : 343 -vs- Team currently working on H5 : 343
For some reason I find this quote hard to believe: "However, Halo 5 is being made by a completely different team" That feels like if the MCC was made by interns lol
Ok, so here is how it was developed. 343i managed the "legacy tech"...i put that in quotes because they claimed to have issues updating Halo 3 itself due to Bungie's legacy tech. I imagine 343i is the group that slapped together all these games and they couldn't handle it. As for Halo 2 Anniversary, Saber Interactive developed the campaign and Certain Affinity the multiplayer maps...just as the original Halo Anniversary. 343i's main designers were probably all working on Halo 5, but I would think that 343i at least helped design the UI and getting the games to function together...otherwise it's completely unclear who to blame.
Halo 4 was a lot worse than MCC. Honestly, that did more damage to the halo brand than anything. Even in its poorly functioning state the MCC still delivered a good package and from what I hear it does work in most aspects now. I did not buy the game yet nor upgrade to X1 because of my PC being better than next gen and 360 still delivering console titles at reasonable states. Also, I did not trust 343i after Halo 4. However, down the road if MCC irons everything out I will pick it up and X1...when I see the value in it. I know this is an X1/343i rant, but I just couldn't justify buying an X1 even for the graphics. I think xbox live is great online and totally worth the money because it's very reliable and rarely goes under maintenance. MCC not working made it clear for me not to upgrade since Halo is my favorite aspect of Xbox. Also, it's little things like astros not working well with xbox one that also annoy me...I need an adapter and my mic might not function? Why do they do things like this when the 360 had it so right -_- /rant
