Reaction: Can 343 Industries Deliver On What's Right For Halo?

There delivering what’s right with Microsoft free to play skins battle passes etc

But not for life long fans milking them and dropping co op split screen which made the earlier games incredibly fun and gave players hours of enjoyment and many great memories.

They clearly aren't up to the task. Halo deserves better than 343, much better

I'm sure the developers at 343 Industries work tirelessly to give us a wonderful product. Yet because the studio suffers from poor management, I feel that the studio has failed - and will continue to fail - to deliver the product that the franchise deserves.

In other words, transfer the talented developers to another studio, fire the management, and take the franchise to another in-house studio. 343 Industries has done enough damage.

I think with Staten back the future is brighter and without him Halo Infinite would probably have released alot worse. I personally think Halo Infinite was a really good game at release but the after launch support has been a disaster and pretty embarassing

Regular Campaign updates are badly needed. Everything they have released is brilliant to be fair it's just the time they take to Release content

No.

After Infinite has run its course, let Halo die. Rename 343 Industries and let them work on something with less pressure and legacy associated with it. They're borking up Halo at every turn, but if they were allowed to work on something else on a smaller scale - maybe a new IP of their own creation - they would probably do fine. The problem is that they're not equipped to live up to what Halo means to a lot of people.

I’m sorry but 343i has had many chances and they’ve failed to deliver every single time, Microsoft has to reestructure the way the franchise is handled from the very top, that means Bonnie Ross has to go alongside top 343i executives.

In fact, when Activision becomes a part of Microsoft I’d seek people who have worked in CoD to give them a shot at Halo, whether give it to an existing team or dissolve 343i and create a new team with people from Raven, Infinity Ward, 343i, id Software, and more.

I don’t know, just do something other than giving it to 343i, it’s just sad to see the state Halo is right now.

Personally I think they need to give someone else a crack at it and let 343 try something new. Halo at this point just feels stale under 343s development imo so a new dev team may breathe new life into the franchise.

This is a franchise that made Xbox what it is today. Without Halo there probably wouldn’t be an Xbox today. Microsoft needs to do better by it and give it to someone who can do it justice.

They had a solid start in my opinion. I think the campaign for Infinite is actually fantastic, and the story wasn’t bad either. It honestly felt like Combat Evolved in the best of ways. However, 343 simply didn’t take anything else as serious it seemed like. The co-op, particularly split screen, is one of the most beloved things about this franchise, and the fact that they are unable to provide that is incredibly disappointing, especially since it’s typically a staple in the majority of the other games in the series. How can they bungle something like that? And at first, the live service aspect was a revolution for the series, and giving us free multiplayer prior to the campaign’s release was a sign to people that they believed in their product. But then no updates were occurring. And still aren’t, really. It’s not always about how you start, but about how you finish … and the finishing touches look to be bare and obsolete. By the time they finally deliver on their “promises”, people will have officially moved on to other games that are simply providing better experiences. It’s a real shame that Halo used to be a flagship franchise for Microsoft, and now it’s just another franchise that lost its way.

Personally and generally, no.

I have just not enjoyed 4 and 5, and Infinite seemed to be clearly giving off the same vibes as time went by. 343i just can not give me what I need and want from Halo.

All three have failed to hit the same highs with the campaign or maintain any sort of decent MP community.

And the damage has been done. 343i needed to lean in on Halo's unique-ness and they never believed in the franchise to ever do that. They could (should) have down scaled the scope to something they could handle, and that maintains the core elements the community needed. Instead they constantly tried to up the scope to match and beat COD, while also trying to find ways to cram in live service sensibilities.

They systematically alienated the community because, like this latest drama has once again proven, they have, and always will, prioritise the wrong things.

Maybe for the fans one day.
Commercially as a success, a seller of consoles and game pass absolutely no, as far as that is concerned the game is dead and gone.
Maybe they should stop flogging the dead horse now.

Halo Infinite was my introduction to the Halo franchise after I was lucky enough to acquire a Series X. I enjoyed the campaign and thought the gameplay was really good. I've never been much of a multiplayer person and the content in the game did little to change my mind. I simply didn't see anything interesting to it. Despite not knowing much about the franchise, I still thought the show was absolute trash and could have been good had it been restricted to a traditional film length and not an episode show. It does seem to me that whomever is running things with the franchise is not doing it justice and there needs to be a massive house-cleaning at the top to fix it.

On the positive I did really enjoy the single player campaign. The FPS and grappling hook was spot on perfection for me.
Graphically and open world biome wise poor to very poor.
Also big moments like battling a scarab etc.
could have been so much more.
If you think what BOTW, ACV and HFW did open world wise, even if you don’t like the gameplay structure etc, it should have been up there with them games, disappointing from that open world game stand point.

Simple answer. No.

They seem to nail the gameplay but apart from that I don’t see where their massive budget goes. Infinite was fun but it was a really simple, pretty lifeless open world with dull copy and paste interiors. After 6 years and a $200 million budget they couldn’t even ship a finished game, missing co-op and multiple other features. If I was a top head at Xbox I’d be absolutely fuming with how poorly Halo has been managed by 343. Unless there’s been discussions behind closed doors we don’t know about MS seem happy with Halo and are just letting 343 get on with consistently under performing.

Imo. Change is needed.

It's worth pointing out that the MCC updates were done by external studios such as Certain Affinity, under contract to 343i.
So even the turnaround's aren't attributable to 343i. All they have done is botch every game launch and outsource the fixing to someone else who is capable.

It's a real shame. The base of Halo Infinite is great, really great! But it's starved for content. Plus the cancelation of couch co-op, while it may not be as popular a feature as it used to be, is just unacceptable considering it was a feature the game was sold with the promise of it happening...at some point. It isn't happening now so the frustration is perfectly understandable.

As far as replacing 343 though, I don't know. Generally speaking I've personally liked their work for the most part thus far, but it's undeniable that post launch support is not their specialty. Sure one might say MCC begs the differ but that took over half a decade to get to where it is. Is that how long it will take to get Infinite to that place? I don't think it has that kind of time.

@Fenbops
Well you put that spot on there, I feel exactly the same.
I really don’t know how 343i are getting away with it from a cost and salary point of few business wise.

Yano as a new xbox player who previously only ever associated halo with xbox this is very worrying. I'm supposed to believe these guys have been given the opportunity to just mishandle this franchise for a decade?

I am coming to the conclusion that Halo should be handed over to Activision once the deal is closed, and have 343 work on new IP.

All I'm saying is I've never seen a studio head head, or really the head of anything, keep their jobs after this many blunders.

Normally one and done. If you're lucky you get a second chance.

Yet here we are. A whole decade later.

Halo is the only reason we even own two Series Xs. They're really trying to make sure we jump ship next Gen.

Astonishing to me that people think that 343i did a good job with Infinite. The campaign was ugly fan fiction made up mostly of that typical annoying 343 button-pressing level design and largely developed by outsourced contractors. It's the worst mainline Halo game and one of the worst games I've ever played.

@Savage_Joe Understood that reference lol

I only jumped into the Xbox ecosystem with the series x but i gotta say that without major restructuring of management and changing their temp worker situation they won't be able to. This game was over a year behind before COVID hit, before they brought back JS. I still have a hard time understanding how they had all those marketing deals in place and didn't know the state of the game. That's on Phil in my eyes. I really enjoyed the campaign and still think the multiplayer is the best there is. But it's constantly shrouded in negativity and so slow to move forward, I can only imagine it's the engine? But they permanently tarnished the IP at this point.

@Tharsman do a spin-off ODST COD. They need to restructure the management of 343 and switch to Unreal and hire good talent. You can see that they really wanted to make it great....just didn't deliver fully on any fronts.

Give back to Bungie...

Games wise it’s not just 343i we have to look at.
In two years this November 2022.
Xbox studios in my opinion have delivered on top end AAA FH5 from playground games.
And the result of all this consoles sitting on shop shelf’s in the UK not selling and sell a console you can sell a game pass so they are linked.
My local 9 stores nearest to me have sold 2 Series X in about two weeks and this in built up areas London and Greater London.
Other shops are giving way little items like old games and T shirts with the console now to help shift them.

I hope everyone that bought it in anticipation of playing it in local co op gets a refund

This is case in point as to why online is one of the WORST things to ever happen to videogames. I know that may sound rash given all the extended content like DLC and online multiplayer that it's provided over the past decade-plus, but from the industry's angle it was always and ONLY about the MONEY, specifically finding every conceivable way to gate. control, and exploit players for more $$$ after the initial point-of-sale. In fact this is precisely why features like local splitscreen (multiplayer or co-op) were cut by 343 in favor of thousands of $$$ worth of Fortnite wannabe skins; the latter makes them more money, end of story. They don't care about any promises they've made and broken, and they'll even blame us the gamers for "unrealistic expectations" and "acting entitled" for rightfully complaining about this dumpster fire.

Truth bomb: these mega-corporations are NOT our friends. If they find a potential revenue stream (say, NFTs) they believe will make them more money than making the games we've come to love, you can bet they'll leave us behind in a cold minute. 343 saw F2P as "the future of Halo", and the rest is history...or perhaps Halo is now history because of it.

Or, who knows, maybe F2P will make 343 and Microsoft more money from Halo Infinite than the traditional model they had before. But not another penny of it will be coming from me, not when they've abandoned the basic features I bought Halo for in the first place.

343 doesn't give a Flying F#$& about what the fans want.

https://twitter.com/HaloCreation/status/1565750119500324867

@Kezelpaso

Maybe 343 is just pure garbage with terrible management that deserve no right to be in existence?

Yes.i would go with that.

The MP was dead to me as soon as i played it, The XP progression system was god awful..

No it can’t. The company is a joke. New management needed urgently!

Please don’t give 343 any slack. They deserve the criticism and so too Microsoft! They just don’t seem to understand what we want or they do but they won’t give it to us because of the woke diversity attitude.