Yeah, which does make other studios look bad until you realize that Epic has over a thousand developers working on Fortnite at any given time nowadays. Even back in March 2018, they had almost 700 developers working on the game after it started to blow up, which is more than what 343 has total now.

Plus it also doesn't help that 343 is barely getting into the live service space, so there were many more growing pains than they even anticipated. 

Definitely but it comes at a cost, back in 2018, Epic had 700 employees and "the majority" work on Fortnite which comes with the cost of Epic not doing anything but Fortnite and reportedly Epic has had nasty crunch in the past as a result of Fortnite.

Also Unreal Engine seems to be a lot better than Slipspace, Lol.

I think if Microsoft wants to even come close to Epic's levels but also avoid that level of crunch, they're going to have to expand 343i further, by comparison, 343i has 541 employees listed on Linkedin but reportedly it's about 600+, however they're split between Infinite, Multi-Media (TV Show, Comics, Books, etc) and Spinoffs (Reportedly one in development) and when you add on the contractor issue which causes 343i to lose vital employees, it makes you question why isn't 343 just hiring these people on a permanent basis? Do they not have the resources to support that?

Bungie also had over 800 employees for the majority of Destiny 2's lifespan (now 1,200) and have expressed multiple times the desire to expand more but needing the funds to do so, hence why they were looking for investments and eventually sold to Sony.

I've said it before, I think 343 is slightly understaffed and I think they need either a 2nd studio or someone to come on as a development partner in a more significant way, Certain Affinity only loans about 100 employees for Halo Infinite, I don't know how much outsourcing Bungie or Epic use.

Yeah live services takes a lot of manpower and are hard to oversea and maintain long term, that's why we see a lot of live service flops these days. 

This also explains how Activision got devoured by the live service model with a lot of their studios turning into CoD support studios, and even that's not enough since they recently opened up another CoD studio in Canada.

343i is super understaffed and it's obvious they weren't ready to go full live service with how Halo Infinite launch. I'm surprised how Rare has been able to manage staying smaller than 343i while supporting SoT. But I guess that's starting to effect them too since we're hearing that Avowed is having development issues.

Actually thought Bungie was still at 800 so when I just checked and saw they're now at 1,200 it was a bit of a surprise, Lol.

But I know for certain that for most of Destiny's 2 development they were over 800 and almost all of them were on Destiny 2 because the new IP was in early pre-production and this doesn't even take into account how much outsourcing they're doing right now which I don't know.

They're probably going to be close to 2,000 when they get that new IP in proper development.

Dunno why Microsoft isn't doing a Bioware with 343 or W/E and setting them up another studio in a location with a lot of talent rather than localised only to Redmond. I know it could be said that they don't deserve it but Jason Schierer straight up said that one of the major issues with Halo Infinite's development was the contractor issue wherein Microsoft has to let contractors go after a certain period and then they can't be rehired for a certain period - Why is 343 not hiring them on a permanent basis?

Sketch's comment in that article makes me convinced even more that 343 is understaffed when he says stuff like "I think it just kind of starts to boil down to a capacity issue. You know, how many people and resources can you throw at a problem?"

Sure 343 has screwed up a few times but they've definitely made Microsoft a good amount of money, from a purely business perspective I don't know how they could argue against a 2nd studio, especially when you have someone like InXile who has very little experience or next to none with creating an AAA RPG getting a brand new, quite large, studio throw at them and tons of cash, Lol.

It's also why acquiring Certain Affinity would be smart.

If they're totally onboard with all of this of course, I would acquire them, dump all their side projects, split them into two core teams, one which works on original content and the other half is a fulltime Halo studio, they aren't just hired and brought onboard when 343 needs them at the tail end of development but a fulltime partner.

Gives Xbox a foothold in Texas, a location they aren't in yet, ripe for expansion, Microsoft uses their wicked employee benefits and such to poach employees from other studios, Texas has a lot of talent in it, if Compulsion can do it, Certain Affinity under Microsoft can too, Lol. Plus Certain Affinity already comes from a position of having heavy experience working on Halo, they understand the engine, they understand Halo.

For some reason I thought they had 'solved' the issues with the MP. But I'm sure Halo being Halo can recover.

It's also why acquiring Certain Affinity would be smart.

If they're totally onboard with all of this of course, I would acquire them, dump all their side projects, split them into two core teams, one which works on original content and the other half is a fulltime Halo studio, they aren't just hired and brought onboard when 343 needs them at the tail end of development but a fulltime partner.

Gives Xbox a foothold in Texas, a location they aren't in yet, ripe for expansion, Microsoft uses their wicked employee benefits and such to poach employees from other studios, Texas has a lot of talent in it, if Compulsion can do it, Certain Affinity under Microsoft can too, Lol. Plus Certain Affinity already comes from a position of having heavy experience working on Halo, they understand the engine, they understand Halo.

Vitally, they understand the engine, an issue with having your own in-house engine is every new person you hire has to spend months getting up to speed with your engine, whereas everyone knows Unreal Engine, Certain Affinity has worked on Halo for years, that is likely not an issue for them or an issue which isn't that big.

It's why studios like CDPR are ditching their engine in favour of Unreal Engine, cause practically every developer already knows Unreal Engine, in-house engines just make this contract rule even more of a pain in the ass but I have to assume that 343 is using Slipspace over Unreal Engine for good reason and ultimately decided it would be better in the long run.

At the moment, “Halo Infinite” does not meet the standards set by other live service games, all of which had their own troubled launch periods, with few recovering over time. And game developers at 343 Industries agree.