Xbox Research Survey Asks Fans If They Are 'Done Playing Halo Infinite'

I pretty much only play once a week now to complete my weekly on Tuesday. I have no reason to do it as I haven’t missed a weekly yet since launch.

The rest of the week I might get on for a week games on the weekend but mostly I’ll play something else. This week I haven’t logged back in since Tuesday.

I’m just not feeling it and I’d wager I’m one of last holdouts of Infinite here on Pure Xbox.

Haven't played since December 2021

It's the first halo game I've not finished the campaign and only played about 10 hours of multiplayer before getting bored.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I never started — although I had planned to — because I was waiting for local multiplayer to be completed. Given the title (Infinite) I originally hoped for something that involved a degree of procedural generation and was a little bummed when it turned out to have no such features, so local multiplayer is all it had going for it in my case.

I’m really enjoying the joint ops game.

I did receive this survey couple of days ago. I haven't touched Infinite in like 6 months. I'm not into multiplayer that much. But I liked the story. That being said 343i may have a really have a tough time ahead of them. The survey was directed towards 343i and their capabilities mainly. But I really hope they get a chance at redemption just like Hello Games did with No Man's Sky.

I play once a day to get the 500 points a match. Working through the Season 2 battle pass.

Played through campaign and maybe 8-10 hours online. Campaign was dissapointing, game was buggy, and MP was barebones and generic.
And I was definitely done afterwards (I simply could not see anything unique and/or special to keep me coming back).

I took a few breaks and now I'm finishing up the 30-level BP at my leisure. Halo Infinite is a good game with great gameplay, marred by delays and poor support. Despite that, this is the most engaged I have ever been with Halo MP.

No, I am not done with HaIo Infinite.
No, I don't trust the team to deliver.

There you go, MS.

Probably jinxed themselves with that title.

@SplooshDmg It is purely rhetorical question, regardless of how any part of Halo fandom feels about it now, Microsoft will never be done trying to make money from it, same with any other publisher and any other major IP. The whole 343 studio was founded exactly because of this. So Halo will continue either way, the question is under which direction and with which quality.

I was done 15 mins after I finished downloading and I played it and thought oh yay another halo by numbers, then I felt sorry for all the people who were hyped by it’s release, then I discovered Ni no kuni as my game I got to soften the terrible halo game blow.

Done with campaign which was ok.
Also gameplay handling etc was very good for me.

The campaign just lacked size, things to do.
And we won’t mention the 2010 graphics and one biome that’s was truly pathetic.

6 years they spent on that open world, not one weather effect etc etc the list goes on, it looked like a student cut and paste job.

Not played Halo since Reach. Thought the Infinite campaign was ok at the start. Why does everything have to be open world now?! Can't we just have well designed levels without the commute?

Loving the multiplayer tho. Ranked Arena currently keeping me off Battlefield and some custom browser Forge games are an absolute hoot!

@ParsnipHero I know we’ve conversed before about the game so I feel you on this. I had gotten back into it after the winter update but the matchmaking is just too unbearable for me. I lost 7 in a row the one day because of poor matchmaking and that was the final straw for me. It’s such a shame.

Why they think that having a diamond 5 on a team to make up for a platinum 2 when the rest of the team is platinum 5 is beyond me. That diamond 5 shreds everyone and I have that crap happen all the time. Sad times.

I’ve completed the campaign, I used to do 2 plays, one on normal and one on legendary, I couldn’t face going back for the legendary. Re the MP, I dip in now and again, it’s ok. But oks not really good enough for Halo 🫤

The campaign was OK but we all know they had to cut some features they wanted to do because they want the game to run on older consoles.

The multiplayer is better than ever, it took some time but now it's great and it's not like there are more fps like it.

Microsoft trickled out the game in a way that tricked my interest elsewhere. This launch was a disaster. The lack of care for the consumer in the process has me not caring if they even fixed it.

@FatalBubbles yea, I feel you there. Sometimes I feel like I have no clue what I'm doing. It's a very frustrating situation to be in. It can't be helping that I don't retain the muscle memory of playing semi regularly on a weekly basis. Every Tuesday requires a warm and can often lead to be a draining evening of gaming.

I haven't touched ranked since season 1 because of the technical issues in the game and haven't really looked back.

I think I'm more at peace dropping Halo Infinite now than I've ever been. However, I don't really have any other game I can see myself throwing myself into, except for Sea of Thieves which I play with my wife.

I haven't had the time to play the campaign but I've been enjoying jumping in on multiple modes of multiplayer the few hours a week that I can. I'm not done with Infinite.

Not done, just waiting for split screen lol....

@FatalBubbles Sadly that seems to be the norm for all online matchmaking anymore. This, OW2, Splatoon 3....IDK what happened but it seems like the norm in all online team gaming is to have some superplayer try to carry poor players against well rounded players and it just makes the concept of online gaming suck. Splatoon revitalized my interest in online gaming, and then unceremoniously slaughtered it. At first I assumed the "majors" did better, but, it seems they don't, they're all drinking from the same outhouse.

@NEStalgia From what I understand is that 343 aim for you to have around a 50% win rate. So they make games harder if you start to win a lot which could be what you’re talking about with someone having to carry worse players. I still don’t understand how they think that’s fair/right though.

@FatalBubbles @NEStalgia "player retention". Designing by data has its down sides.

Apparently people are more likely to keep playing because they'll think they'll win the next game. Doesn't always work that way and is a terrible pattern to design against.

In an ideal world, they should develop a good product and trust their gamers to stick around.

I will say though, gaming isn't what it was. We have so many game trying to hook players in. It's just not a casual experience any more.

@FatalBubbles Sounds about right, and ideally a 50% win rate would determine your rank....but that's just it....you shouldn't be moving upward with a 30% win rate, and you shouldn't see continuous losses in bad matches if the ranks were unfolding naturally. Trying to algorithmically assess "player skill" is inherently never going to work, particularly in a TEAM game. Solo free for all games, sure, you can figure out skill by win rates and k/d, but not in a team game where a lot is going on not related to any individual metric so easily.

@ParsnipHero That's the problem though is that you DON'T win the next round, you just hit a wall of losing much of the time because you're always thrown against impossible odds.

But in general, I agree, with the advent of "online" gaming, video games has shifted instead of being an analogy to sports and tabletop games, has instead become analgous to casino games where it's all about rigging the win rates and trying to hook players ,etc.

Imagine if pro football had "managed" win rates and team building to adjust the ratios and player retention. It would be called "rigged" and declared illegal. But people seem to love rigged games. And skill based games aren't really skill based if the machine is rigging results. Honestly can't imagine really having an interest in online gaming pretty much ever, other than maybe coop PvE.

@NEStalgia "That's the problem though is that you DON'T win the next round, you just hit a wall of losing much of the time because you're always thrown against impossible odds."

Absolutely.

@Dezzy70 even Metroid Prime on the GameCube had weather and fog inside the helmet. Halo lacked attention to detail, from big things all the way down to small. Yes the gunplay was fun, yes it did many things right, but without the attention to detail it plays and looks unfinished. It’s like the weirdest game, cause on one hand i can say it’s so close to being really good and on the other i can say this is pathetic attempt with the money and dev time spent. I got 100 hours into it, 75 being multiplayer, so it’s not like I haven’t seen enough to have this opinion. They need to do something crazy special to get the attention of the players with the next game, and more than likely the next game will be awesome with no one playing it, say like Titanfall 2.

There's nothing to do after you beat it without starting ALL OVER. There's simply no replayability.

I enjoyed the campaign as much as I have any of the halo games. Not a mp game kinda guy but i have went back and played the campaign twice and enjoyed the gun play and story.

Maybe its time to let master chief get some much deserved r&r ?

@SplooshDmg When the next team delivers a proper Halo BR it’ll be revived. 343 stubbornly and or arrogantly thought TDM was all players wanted.

Makes sense, they probably are trying to decide whether to do a relaunch or something or it could be just to compare data vs a future survey if say they did stand behind the game and 343i started kicking some ass with new content and perhaps a completely upgraded campaign on top.

Halo should be a showcase title but last gen support ensured it wouldn't be, at least not visually.

I think MS has learned their lesson about using contract workers and rotating them out as they do while using a bespoke engine like slipspace.

The really unfortunate part is slipspace on series x is genuinely capable of mind-blowing visuals and audio but none of the more advanced features were even used due to the VCR support.

I still love half infinite. The core gameplay is just too good for them to move on so I really hope this time has been spent fixing it and when the next season releases in like 36 days or something that it just blows people away.

Oh can we stop using steam player counts as the metric for total players? It's not accurate because it doesn't count Xbox & Windows store players even though it's crossplay. It only counts steam users.

If the player count was as low as steam says then finding a game in every mode would basically be impossible but... It's not even close. Hell yesterday I played ranked for 3 hours and didn't see the same people over and over like I would in a game that has the number steam shows and multiple game modes

I haven’t played it in months. I’m probably officially done with the game, and probably done with Halo altogether… 343i has nothing to do with this decision tho. It mainly cause my interest in gaming is fading as I get older, and my interest move to other hobbies that some would say is more fitting for my age.

For like 3-4 months after launch I was absolutely addicted. I couldn't get enough. The thing that drove me to stop playing eventually was just how familiar I became with the maps and how small of a variety there were. Then to add to that only getting 2 maps at most after months and months of waiting and eventually I just lost interest.

That said I had a wonderful time while it was fresh. I bought the campaign on steam and don't regret my purchase one bit. I'm sure I'll get the itch to play it again eventually...assuming they don't abandon it.

Not done, mostly on hold until the next season. They really shot themselves not using unreal. I hope infinite gets gracefully sunset and Halo 7 comes out in 2025. I still enjoy infinite but it's clear it's not winning the public back. Halo needs another reset.

I don't hold positive or negative expectations based on "pedigree." Blank slate is best.

I like how people compare this to CoD, on Reddit, but those teams make marginal changes to their various engine branches, every few years. They also don't have quite the revolving door.

@Green-Bandit
Off subject I’m one year older today
And treating myself to a second play through
Of Hivebusters, amazing game.
Even better on my LG C2 and sound system 😊

@Dezzy70 Happy Birthday buddy, Hivebuster’s graphics was insane and it looks great on my C1, but that C2 is even brighter. My buddy has one and it looks great. I will get a new Tv in a few years, happy with the C1 at the moment.

@Green-Bandit
Thank you chap.
Both TVs are amazing and really good and best all round.

@Dezzy70 yeah i enjoy the heck out of my Oled. Who knows what I’ll buy next, but a strong bet it’s oled. Maybe LG, Sony or something else. But for now we are set on features and picture quality.

@Green-Bandit
Maybe one of those QD-OLED new type TVs
Though I would wait a few generations in, as they normally get better each generation to a point.

@Dezzy70 exactly, that’s my thoughts as well. Time will tell. But Oled is hard to beat once you have it and use it daily. When i go to other peoples house and watch a football game or they have TV on, i can’t help but look at it and just think to myself, Oled crushes this. Not to be a snob and i don’t tell them that of course. But my point is Oled is hard to replace once you have it. I slightly want one of those Sony in Zone monitors, but i know i will like it less than my TV. So i just save the money.

First halo campaign I didn’t finish within two months … I smell the same fall coming for gears of war since the character switch

@Green-Bandit

Off subject, I know Xbox are playing a slightly different game to Sony.
But you would think Hogwarts is a Sony exclusive seeing the adverts in the UK.
Xbox need to get a grip of this as this game will be extremely popular.
Not sure but who has the new Star Wars game out in April advertising rights.
Believe it or not this advertising rights and games looking like Sony exclusives really does damage Xbox sales.
Peeps at work think they are Sony PS5 exclusives, it’s a clever strategy even if it costs.

@Dezzy70 it’s true and we’ve talked about that before. When i watch sports, all i see is PS5 commercials. I rarely see much about Xbox. It’s a poor job on their part hands down and you had a good eye and business sense to point this out on here several times. Microsoft puts more adds in their Ui than they do on Tv and around cities. Sony meanwhile have little to no add’s in the Ui and i see them on Tv all the time. Makes no sense to me.

@Green-Bandit
I just want Xbox to get back to being its best.
But you know I think a lot about it.
And I just don’t get their strategy overall.
Some of it is ok, but the rest of what I would implement is just missing.

If GP don’t do it for them, will be interesting to see what they do next.

@Dezzy70 Buckle in, this is going to be a sizable reply. Microsoft as a company stinks, Apple and Google are ahead in so many categories outside of not having a forceful windows OS to 3 quarters of the planet. Sony constantly runs circles around Xbox cause they are a creative entertainment company. They know how to run entertainment, while Xbox was started cause MS wanted a PC in the living room, then after 360 got some momentum, they got greedy and wanted the ‘One” so they could control more of the living room other than games. The games has been an issue for far to long, the Ui is dated and feels like a cheap 2012 laptop with windows 8 on it. No innovation to the control or Ui this gen, a worse mobile app than Sony’s, and the list goes on and on. Yes i am a big Xbox fan, you and i have been there since day 1, but my patience is wearing thin, they needed to come out swinging this gen and in 2022, they laid an egg, while Sony had GT7, GOWR and others. I am just beyond frustrated that a company this size sucks at everything they do and the one success they have is a OS that sucks but is the worldwide leader, and as a Mac user i am not sure why, but it is what it is. To your point of if GP don’t do it for them, what’s next? I can tell you what’s next more GP. They will go games as a service on PS, PC, switch and mobile. Hence they want ABK so bad, it’s for the mobile and if you listen to them talk they mention having nothing in the mobile space and having a huge desire for King. They will own a ton of studios of publish on other platforms including Cloud. Thats my take, but it has the backing of others in higher places than me, so i know i am not to far off. Am i saying there isn’t another Xbox after this one? No i ain’t ready to say that, but the time is coming if they don’t turn this around that they will take their software and spread it around as a service. Which leads me into my closing, what would i do if i ran Microsoft and the Xbox Division? Not that anyone truly cares, but we chat it up as friends and bounce ideas off one another. I would start by rebranding Xbox. The name Xbox is largely a name for the hardcore gamer, causals don’t think much of it, the excitement and mindshare around the name is clearly 3rd to PlayStation and Nintendo. The naming system of Xbox is TRASH. Is the 360 better than the One, is Series X better than 360, what was the last one? Which do i buy for my son or daughter a S or a X? All of it is garbage and i would come out with a new branding name and a whole new emphasis on quality and premium look and feel. PS5 is so much more thought of as premium. New Ui, new Controller, games releasing, great headsets, stylish console design, tho i dislike it, it just has so many advantages to the average consumer that Xbox just seems behind or to hardcore like a PC. I want your thought to this, cause you have your head centered on Xbox success and failures. I value your opinion strongly, am i out of my head talking this noise or is there something to consider here?