7/3/2023 0 Comments New halo game ps4![]() The latest roadmap for Halo Infinite, published in September 2022. It’s possible that the game’s free-to-play multiplayer side can be kept running, but season 3 will have to be brilliant, and accompanied by a rock-solid roadmap, to start winning back the trust it needs. The reports that no expansions for Infinite’s campaign are in production are the death knell for the original idea of Infinite as a persistent universe of Halo. Amid growing disquiet from the game’s community about the pace of updates, the game’s third multiplayer season has been delayed by months. Some, like the local co-op mode that had been a staple of Halo since the first game, were scrapped. Features promised for launch were long delayed. It turned out that 343 and the Slipspace Engine were not up to the task. Infinite was to be a live game platform that would last for at least a decade, which would be expanded rather than supplanted with sequels, not unlike Bungie’s Destiny (although it’s fair to point out that Bungie itself needed a fresh start with Destiny 2 to actually realize this plan). Wiser heads prevailed, and the game was salvaged - or was it? Halo Infinite was a good game in the isolated moment of its launch, but it was meant to extend far beyond that. Whichever it was, the relationship between Halo and the people making it appeared to have grown dysfunctional. Either 343 didn’t fully appreciate the problems with its own game, or Microsoft felt too beholden to the power the Halo brand has over Xbox fans to let go of it in a new console launch year, even when it might be actually harmful not to. As soon as you saw it, a delay to the game seemed inevitable, but somehow it was being presented to the public as the centerpiece of a Xbox’s yearly summer showcase, with a 2020 date still attached. This demo was perhaps the first sign that Halo, as an enterprise, was in real trouble. Microsoft blamed the delay on the COVID-19 pandemic, but it only took the decision to push it back after a disastrous demo of the game in the summer of 2020 was widely derided for its quality. But the game had missed its target to launch alongside the Xbox Series consoles by a whole year. The third mainline Halo game from 343, Infinite was released in late 2021 to a reasonably warm reception: It had transposed Halo’s trademark first-person shooter gameplay to an open-world setting without losing too much of what made it special, while the multiplayer mode, released separately as a stand-alone, free-to-play game, initially seemed to hit the mark. Polygon has also heard from multiple sources about the shift to Unreal Engine 5, and the Certain Affinity game.īehind all this is the story of Halo Infinite. No new story content for Halo Infinite is being worked on, Bloomberg reported, while unreleased multiplayer modes languish with tech troubles, and external studio Certain Affinity works on a possible battle royale-style spinoff. 343 will move from using its own Slipspace Engine - a point of pride for a developer that had always put its tech credentials to the fore - to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. In late January, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier painted a picture of a studio “ all but starting from scratch.” At least 95 people at the company had lost their jobs in the layoffs, including many key development staff. Both the studio and Xbox chief Phil Spencer had to take the humiliating step of denying a rumor that 343 would no longer be working on Halo games directly, instead farming them out to third-party studios. It then became apparent that Halo franchise head Kiki Wolfkill had left too. ![]() It was reported that Joe Staten, a Bungie veteran drafted in to get Infinite back on track, was on his way out following the 2022 departure of several other leads, including studio head Bonnie Ross. Recriminations followed, with former staff laying the blame for this - and for the perceived disappointment of Halo Infinite - at the door of “incompetent” leadership. A round of layoffs at Microsoft in January hit the studio hard. 343 Industries, the internal studio Microsoft created to make Halo games after parting ways with series creator Bungie, is in apparent disarray.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |