I mean every night for six months post-launch I'd climb up to tallest hill, raise my fist high, damn Rod to depths of Nether and holler at the stars that if he wants my money he'll have to loot it off my dead body. Now imagine if on top of all other issues Gears had no co-op campaign? I might not have bought 3 Operation passes eventually. There's a lesson to be learned here.

I feel like with 343's Halo games there's always a catch... I mean it wasn't that long ago I was talking in discord about 343's games always launching with missing features/broken. I miss the days when a game launched complete... I personally would rather them delay the game than release it like this (what's another 3 months at this point?). We got Forza and it's not like the competition is doing much this holiday. Man this seriously reduces hype for me, and honestly makes me more worried for the campaign in general. I always did my first run through with friends, experiencing the story at the same time. Now we're discussing if we should wait or do it solo.... Forge is one thing but Co-op Campaign is such a part of halo's identity. Reviewers will RIGHTFULLY dock 343i for this.

It's not about distrusting individual studios. I'm distrustful of the way MS is managing (or failing to manage) these studios. Hands off is nice, to a point. But when you arrive at the point of your mascot franchise coming off it's worst ever entry, and then for the follow up, that you've already given an extra year of dev time, your studio can't even ship with a core pillar of the franchise like co-op, which has been in literally every Halo game ever made....like...wtf is that?

You don't wanna micromanage studios to death, but - clearly - MS is practically turning a blind eye to the point of letting the monkeys run the zoo. Co-op should be an understood priority for Halo, and if at some point in review it comes up that this feature may not be ready at launch, somebody needs to get a seriously stern talking to about what the hell is going on over there.

If MS isn't tuned in enough to their studios that they can't see or prevent the mismanagement of the series that Xbox fans have the most emotional attachment towards, then who's to say that over time their other studios won't also go off the rails when personnel naturally shifts about through the years? Yea, sure, I can trust the likes of Playground Games to put out top tier titles right now. But what about 5 years from now when X amount of key people go off in various different directions to do whatever, and Matt Booty is sitting in a corner with a blindfold pretending that it's the same studio it's always been and he can just let them do whatever the hell they want? 

There's a degree of negligence here on Microsoft's part that is disconcerting to say the least. They should no more let a Halo game ship without co-op than EA should let a Mass Effect game ship without companions or some BS.

TC did an amazing job. Between G4/G5 they only had three years. They supported G4 during those three years and made G5.  The issues came after when it was known that they had to release in 19 and that some TC employes were moved to the 343 team to work on Halo. Then also covid happen but overall TC did a good job.

Talking about TC.  Their seems to be some turmoil going on. At best we have radio silence because next week they will announce the new IP at the gamescome general show and they are preparing for it or their is more going on. We already had TC sera leaving a few weeks ago she was also great and I would hate it to see TC Shauny also leave.

I see Halo news lit up this thread to have 10+ new pages in just one day.

As for release date, I suppose it either releases November 15 in 20th anniversary date or it's getting delayed into early 2022. As was pointed out by others November-December period is already stacked, so Microsoft either risks to release Halo and Forza within one week of each other or they delay Halo.

Now as for campaign co-op and Forge delay. One positive thing here is that it means that Halo Infinite won't have a stupid forced co-op like Halo 5 with having to rely on stupid NPCs if you play solo, which is good. So, this proves that Infinite co-op is more in line with what older Halo games had.

Now as for negatives. I personally don't really care that much about these modes, but the problem here is not the delay of certain components, but the fact that 343i having a troubled development on a game that they've been working on for 6 years. The game, that is seen by many as the one that will either bring Halo series back on top or make it sink. I think the delay of co-op and Forge is just a tip of an iceberg and the game will end up having more serious problems on release.

Should it be delayed just to have a co-op and Forge at launch? I don't think so. They've already come up with the statement that co-op will be released in Season 1 update, so any delay if it happens won't change that.

Hell no. If Xbox One version is to blame here, it should just be cancelled at this point. Releasing just Series X|S and PC versions at launch, hoping that Xbox One version will be fixed in additional few months is a bad approach. Cyberpunk is a perfect example of that. It just means that Xbox One version is never gonna get fixed in the end.

Here's what I DO know. I know that before the cancelled E3 show LAST YEAR, we were hearing about how 343, despite not having shown much of Halo Infinite was quietly confident about this game, how sad they were that they didn't get to do an actual E3 show due to COVID, cus this was gonna be their year to "own" that shit, etc. And now, here we are, well over a year later, with the game getting all that extra dev time....and they're now telling us they STILL can't actually deliver a proper Halo package when they launch later this year.

I also know, that literally everyone here in this thread agreed, that after the massive disappointment that was Halo 5, 343 absolutely needed to redeem themselves with a game that was feature complete at launch, and overdeliver on quality on top of that.

I'm sick and tired of the excuses. I don't wanna hear about the challenges of co-op in an open world or whatnot....you spent like 4 years and god knows how much money creating this new engine...an engine purpose built for Halo....which has always had co-op...since day 1. 343, as presently operated, isn't fit to be in charge of Halo. Not the actual devs there, cus clearly a lot of them are doing good work (everything about MP looks awesome), but anyone and everyone with some hand in management over there who's been in charge of stewarding this clusterfuck needs to be thrown on their ass yesterday.

To be fair, 343i indeed needs a boot. If Microsoft cares about Halo, they should give it to another studio after Infinite. And 343i should be moved on working with smaller projects.

You're completely misinterpreting what I've been saying. I didn't say that Halo Infinite as a whole is doomed, or that it will be a terrible game. I'm saying it's unacceptable to launch a Halo game without something core to the identity of the franchise as co-op. Nvm, co-op AND Forge (this somehow despite Forge having a whole separate studio working/helping on it). The campaign side suffers, the MP side suffers. You've once again failed to deliver what people come to expect when they buy a Halo game. That simply isn't good enough for Xbox's premier franchise. Fans have every right to expect better.

And we also have every right to look at this situation, along with the knowledge that this isn't the first time that 343 have mismanaged Xbox's flagship game, and call into question the overall management approach that MS takes with it's studios. Phil has been in charge for a long time now. Booty has been around for a long time. There will have been ample opportunities to look at what's happening at 343, and decide shit...this isn't working, we need to make some changes here. They've failed to do so. Why should that make me anything other than pessimistic about the long term prospect of other studios under MS?

As you said, and I completely agree, personnel turnover is highly regular in the gaming space. People in key positions come and go all the time, and eventually, inevitably, a lot of the studios MS now owns will consist of largely different individuals. Why should I believe that the MS hands off, let em do whatever approach is going to be healthy for these teams beyond the foreseeable future? You're basically telling me that I need to have faith in every single one of these studios on an individual basis, that they can manage themselves, because if anything goes wrong, I have no evidence that I can trust someone at MS to step in and say "nah, this ain't it, we need to have a hard discussion about what's going on here."

XGS, like Halo Infinite, isn't "doomed." But it's completely reasonable to question whether MS, especially as they continue to be in the business of acquiring ever more studios, are capable making sure these studios are run well over time, beyond saying "We bought this team cus we think they're great, so we're gonna leave them alone, and hope they just keep being great forever."

Simple. People are often too close to certain situations to make the best decisions. Yes, some of these people, whenever they leave or retire will pick great replacements, but some of them will not. It's totally normal for things to not always work out for the best, even when everybody involved has the best of intentions. Sometimes you're wrong about a certain person on various levels. That's when you need someone with a bit more distance, overseeing the whole operation (as I understand it, this would/should be Matt Booty, as it stands), to step in and see if either you can make small tweaks to get the situation to work out, or make a tough call and say this person/these people aren't right for this job.

And the fact of the matter is, that the continued problems at 343 call into question whether MS is capable of injecting themselves into their individual studio's operations in a positive manner. Right now, from the outside looking in, it seems to me that all they're capable of being is a money man, and I don't think that's good enough.

18 months after G4 release they announced G5 with the cutscene trailer at E3. Tactics wasn't that demanding cause it was mostly splash damage and the halo wars guys who did the work.   So what else did they do in the meantime? Most of the maps/DLC hivebusters were leaked before launch (dripfeeding) so they must have been doing stuff considering they could make G5 while also providing support for G4.   A change to UE5 from doesn't take that much time, that Wukong game did it as an example but it doesn't matter. Showing a trailer this year and releasing next year would not be strange especially when Halo infinite was shown in 2018 and is still not released. I don't expect the new IP to be a AAA game anyway but rather a game simalar like obsidian's grounded or Ninja theory's Bleeding edge in size.

The turmoil is based on the fact that a lot of Gears veterans have left TC the last year.

After ROD:

TC Octus
Ryan Clevan (MP designer)
Greg Mitchel (cutscenes and + 15 years of service)
Dana
TC sera

and a ton of contractors and people who I forgot, their aren't that many left who were part of the G5 development.