Phil Spencer on Halo's Absence at Xbox Showcase: We Have a Lot More Games Now - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 July 2023 / 4,947 Views
Halo Infinite and the Halo franchise was absent from the Xbox Games Showcase & Starfield Direct in June even though 343 Industries is set to launch Season 4 for the game next week.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview with The Guardian explained the reason for the lack of Halo at the showcase is due to Xbox having over 20 first-party studios and more games than before.
"I wouldn't say Halo is of lesser importance, but we have over 20 studios now," said Spencer.
"I'll go back to the years where I had basically four games – Fable, Forza, Halo, Gears, the four horseman of the apocalypse. We have a lot more games now."
Microsoft at the Xbox Games Showcase & Starfield Direct showcased 27 games with multiple first-party games. This included Starfield, Forza Motorsport, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Fable, Avowed, Clockwork Revolution, South of Midnight, and many more.
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I disagree that Halo cannot still be a big hit. If anything all it needs is a jump start. There still is a huge player base that still enjoy the series, all it needs is for the current team to really bring out the wow in the game. Give the kids the pretty graphics, give the old school that open playground to mess around in and give Ryuu Forge and local co-op and all will be forgiven.
I think there's a good chance that 343 will be able to get it all right in the next game. Infinite is a solid entry in the series. They just dropped the ball on producing sufficient content for a live service game. Presumably, they've learned that lesson now. So they should be able to get that straight next time around.
In Pierre we trust!!!
Fr though, gunplay, sandbox, maps, and weapons are all great! Best that 343 has ever produced. Campaign was pretty decent, but I wouldn't consider great. But with how much content there is with Halo that players have come to expect like campaign, multiplayer, forge, and social features such as theater and file share, 343s development team should've been at least 1000 devs. Instead, the entirety of 343 was less than half that when Infinite launched......that's not enough for a live service. Let alone enough developers to simultaneously work on campaign and forge. Infinite's forge has been nothing short of god tier!
it would need a GoW/BOTW level reboot as in something people who never played or not played in years don't know the lore can jump in and the gameplay has been heavily revamped. I think Infinite tried to be that by slapping an open world on it. MS has yet to figure just making an area bigger doesn't mean better.
Halo has carried the Xbox brand for decades, its a Series that competes with the very best. Now with more studios, Halo doesn't have to be forced out to stay competitive, they can cover the ground with other games until Halo is ready. Nintendo is a good example of this. If Zelda gets delayed, they have Mario to carry the brand etc.
Halo is my favorite franchise, by a wide margin. Infinite had many of the makings of a hit. It's just that 343 didn't understand how to service an ongoing game. Unfortunately, since they dropped the ball there, it didn't turn out to be a big hit, and I think that has done irreparable harm to the franchise. It's been too long since there was a big hit Halo game. There's a whole generation of gamers now that don't think of Halo as a top tier IP.
MS is certainly not going to abandon it. It's way too valuable and popular for that. But, with the aquisition of Bethesda, even if they don't end up with Activision, there's no case to be made that Halo is their flagship franchise anymore. It's not going to get the biggest budgets. It's not going to be the top priority. And, that makes me sad.
With the benefit of hindsight, I believe they should have:
Released an Xbox One-only version of just the Halo Infinite campaign in 2021, to have SOMETHING to honour the 20th anniversary with.
DO NOT RELEASE MULTIPLAYER UNTIL FORGE WAS READY! If the community can create their own content, they'll be more tolerant of dry-spells coming from 343.
DO NOT RELEASE THE XBOX SERIES VERSION OF CAMPAIGN UNTIL CO-OP IS READY! Since there's an Xbox One version of the campaign out there, don't release the Xbox Series version until it's feature complete. The community will tolerate the delay as they can also play the Xbox One version on their Xbox Series version.
I think people would have flipped their s*** about not releasing the series version of the campaign when the Xbox One version was available. Maybe, just maybe, had they explained very candidly that it isn't ready and we want to give you guys something, possibly there would have been a reasonable reaction. But, I don't think that's a safe bet.
In my opinion, they should have just delayed it another 6 to 12 months. It appears that that's what they needed to get all of the content ready to go.
By dropping the Xbox One version in Game Pass, and it running on Series consoles with improvements, I think people would have been understanding. Especially if, as you say, it was candidly communicated that this was a way to come back with an even better Xbox Series version the following year (campaign co-op, Forge, etc.). And that would have allowed the team to focus all their engineering muscle just on the Xbox Series version thereafter.
Good article!
So admission that for like 20 years they have burdened Halo with the weight of the whole platform?
That's the way I took his comments. Though once Gears came out, that took a lot of pressure off Halo because there was a lot of cross-interest between Halo and Gears. I knew lots of people who played each of them. Moreso than there was cross-over between Halo and Fable, or Halo and Forza, in my experience.
And yes it is pretty clear that both Halo lost some of its shine but also with GP and plenty of devs purchase the burden have been spread out a lot. I hope that will give Halo the headroom to breath and come back to the height it once had.
Yeah, agreed on all counts. And agreed it would be nice to see Halo come back to its previous heights.
The trailer for Season 4 of Infinite was AWESOME! It really should have been at the showcase. But Halo is by far no longer the juggernaut it once was. No one can deny that. Infinite had a chance to bring Halo back into a strong position in the gaming industry, but 343 was just not equipped for an ongoing live-service, nor did they have the proper management in charge that truly understood Halo for over a decade. So a lot of the harm to the franchise was self-inflicted.
Infinite's future is very solid now, but, too much damage has been done that they're never going to get that broad audience outside of the core fanbase. Halo is no longer Xbox's biggest IP and never will be again, which saddens me.
Now that 343 has proper management that gets Halo, future Infinite content is and will be great for however long that lasts, and hopefully this means future Halo titles will be great as well, so at least Halo can still forever be a core Xbox IP.
Disappointed, as it's the only exclusive I enjoyed on series s so far.
Phil Spencer is telling us that Fallout 76 deserved more time Xbox's own show than the likes Halo.
He should really stop doing interviews.
Or how about Sea of Thieves got new content at the showcase, but Halo got 0.
Halo is my favourite series, I've bought the Master Chief collection literally 5 times, but after Halo 4,5 and now Infinite, Halo is dead to me, Till they prove otherwise.
If there was a new Halo game far enough along they would have showed it. As much as I would have liked to see more Halo myself, I'm not going to pretend a new season for Halo Infinite is a bigger deal than a huge story expansion for Sea of Thieves and Fallout 76.
It isn't really a 0 sum game, if they were willing to show expansions for SoT and Fallout 76 (a game that had a very poor reception right?) then they could edit the show or give it a couple more minutes to show a Halo announcement as small as saying Season 4 is coming.
There is no way to know the decision making process. For all we know, MS wanted a season 4 trailer but 343 couldn't get it ready in time for when they finalize content for the showcase. This whole things seems very overblown, you know, the typical fake outrage.
Sure it is very possible that 343i couldn't make the trailer for whatever reason, I'm just saying that saying there was just to much to show doesn't really make sense.
Makes perfect sense. Plenty of studios didnt get to show off footage of their games. Perfect Dark? EverWild, Coalition, IDs next game etc
No need to rush Halo out anymore. Plenty of great games coming to cover until Halo is ready.
I'm not saying they have to rush Halo, what I'm saying is if there was material ready saying they had to much to show (a lot of the stuff much smaller than Halo) doesn't justify not having Halo. Having a lot of material certainly justify not pressuring Halo or rushing it though.
What part doesn't make sense? It was a 100+ minute show with a direct. It's already longer then their typical 90 minute show. Not everything needs to be at this. It's great they have more content to show after this!
So they have over 20 studios and don’t have enough time to show off all their games…..and soon they get ABK which will add a tonne more.
Good luck if you’re not one of the prominent studios.
It's a good problem to have
Not if you poorly manage studios and MS has still much to prove in that area.
And how many Xbox games have you played which are poorly managed?
Anyways, they had showed what several of their smaller studios are working on during this last showcase. They have their own developer directs and other shows they can use. Not everything needs to be at this one showcase. You know, like what Nintendo and Sony do now.
It might be OK, because as game development gets longer and longer the ability for any one studio to produce titles frequently drops, giving every studio a moment in the sun?
Actually it is all about managing the showtime. A good number of titles have been announced several years ago and showed multiple times, not with much difference sometimes, so they really shouldn't have a problem showing it is more likely that other studios didn't had things ready. I really doubt people would be upset if instead of 1h30 a show had 2h if all the content show is great. I think it was more like they showed all they could/wanted to show and just as PR is preferred to say they had even more to show.
Sounds like Microsoft is pretty confident in their 1st party lineup now. They should sell Halo to Bungie with the stipulation that the games can release on any platform they want but it absolutely needs to come to Xbox. It's the only way to get a great Halo game again.
Hahaha no.
Why do you think Bungie wanted to separate from Microsoft? They didn't want to work on Halo anymore lol. They said it themselves. We praise Halo: Reach now, but we were all very mixed on it when it released, and it was clear that Bungie were running out of ideas as to how to continue the franchise.
Yep, MS likely could have made 343i at that time and allowed both Bungie to do whatever they wanted while dedicating some senior staff to mentor and transition Halo to 343i. But yes I doubt Bungie would want to pick Halo back even if they didn't belong to Sony.
If Bungie were manned by the same group of people that did the first trilogy, I'd agree. But that house is full of different faces. It's only Bungie in name. So, sadly, shipping Halo back to them wouldn't accomplish what you're hoping it would.
