Halo Infinite Campaign Co-op Delayed as 343 Only Wants to Ships Experiences When They are Ready - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 December 2021 / 2,743 Views
343 Industries head of creative Joseph Staten speaking with IGN explained the reason co-op campaign for Halo Infinite was delayed is due to the studio only wanting to "ship experiences when they are ready."
"I work on Halo but I’m still a Halo fan and campaign co-op is essential to the experience," said Staten. "Playing Halo with your friends is playing Halo, whether it’s multiplayer or campaign. So of all the decisions that we made that were the most difficult, delaying co-op was very, very hard.
"But it shows the commitment of the studio. Even when it’s challenging. Even when it hurts to only ship experiences when they are ready. To only ship quality experiences. And that’s so important for any franchise, but certainly a franchise like Halo that’s been around for 20 years."
He added, "If we don’t maintain that high bar, if we don’t commit ourselves to excellence, and commit ourselves to every time we launch something to delighting our customers, living up to our expectations, ideally exceeding our expectations, I don’t think we’re doing this job right. And the simple truth was co-op just wasn’t ready. And we decided to prioritize our efforts in other areas."
Halo Infinite free-to-play multiplayer is now available on the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, while the campaign will release on December 8.
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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I really like the PvP, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the campaign. But, in just about everyone's opinion, co-op is fundamental to the Halo experience. So, by this guy's own definition, they shipped an experience that is not ready.
Also, they made a big deal after H5 saying that they wouldn't release another Halo without split screen, because that's fundamental to the experience. But, they most certainly have done that.
The multiplayer has splitscreen and it's there at launch. If Halo Infinite had a straight forward Halo campaign like the rest, this wouldn't be a discussion, but it's not.
You're mixing words. It's a feature that's essential and will be there in 6 months when it's ready. Nothing is changing at this point so still talking about how the game should be delayed adds nothing to the conversation.
The article shouldn't be here if we're not supposed to talk about it.
You can talk about whatever, but that doesn't mean someone can't disagree. What you're saying isn't constructive feedback, it's getting upset about something that can't and won't change. I'm sure it sucks for them as much for the players that the game won't ship with everything they planned, but as they said, they would rather ship experiences when they're ready.
In one breath he says that co-op is essential to Halo, and in another breath he says that they only ship experiences that are ready. So, shouldn't they have delayed Halo until coop was ready?
That kinda sucks. I was looking forward to playing it co-op. But oh well. Guess I'll have to play it single player first.
lol this isn't funny anymore. It's just freaking hilarious!
They want to ship experiences when they are ready and complete, that's irony as the game is launching without it.
As much as it stings, that’s admirable and a mindset I’d like more game developers to have.
Well several people on this site says MS gives full freedom to their studios so we can't at the same time also say it is MS that pressured them.
Full freedom doesn’t mean what you think it means, apparently. You’re smarter than this, don’t console warrior it up
Freedom to propose/prototype projects isn't the same as freedom to release them whenever the dev team wants, or market them however they want. They might have the freedom to propose and even to develop projects, but Xbox Game Studios is going to want to slot them into release windows that make sense for the full portfolio of their games/studios. So I imagine there's going to be some negotiation between the individual development teams and Xbox Game Studios on that point.
The teams are going to want the freedom to work on things, and to keep working on them until they're ready, but Xbox Game Studios is going to want to make sure they space out the releases in a way that makes sense. They probably brought out Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite's multiplayer beta too close to each other, as an example of why this matters and what they're probably going to want to avoid going forward, as they integrate all their studio acquisitions and space out the projects they're all working on. If Halo had come out last year as planned, that wouldn't have been a problem, for example.
Going forward, with 23 studios (some with multiple teams each) they should have ample time for each game and should be able to avoid that in the future. Xbox Game Studios has suggested they only plan to release one big game per quarter, likely figuring that's all that's necessary to keep people subscribed to Game Pass (which is what matters if you're Microsoft).
Accounting for the fact that a few teams are working on smaller games, that still leaves an average of about 5-6 years per team, per game. Except it's actually more than that as some teams won't need anywhere near that long between releases, such as Turn 10's Forza Motorsport team, and Playground Games' Forza Horizon team, which usually only need 2 years per game each (3 during a console transition year), which means potentially even longer than 5 years per game for the other teams.
Which is good if you're a team like The Coalition which is switching engines (UE4 to UE5), or if you're The Initiative and coordinating with an outside team as you work to staff yourself up, or if you're a Bethesda team working on a sprawling RPG (and hopefully planning to release something less buggy than they often have in the past!). :)
343 at this point has a long history of launch disasters.
Good article!
Better late than never. I'm still waiting for Halo 5 with split screen.
Wasn't that clearly indicated before launch that we shouldn't ever expect that feature for Halo 5, in the interest of maintaining 60 FPS during campaign?
Though that would be a cool update to have added for the One X, or to now add for the Series X|S, since we have more powerful consoles to run that game on now.
Strange since they were going to ship the whole Halo in a pretty sorry state before the backlash of that show.
Tales from DonFerrari’s butt
i thought street fighter v releasing only versus mode was worse,
looks like we found somethig similar
Not even close but good trolling attempt.
Not complaining. Those that want that feature will get it eventually. No point stopping others from playing the game that wont use the feature.
Ouch i struck a nerve..
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