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Forums - Microsoft - Halo Infinite delayed to 2021

sales2099 on 12 August 2020
DonFerrari said:
OTBWY said:

Uh yes, cause they are delaying it now? Why would they say it before it affecting a release which is approaching? It's like you're digging to find anything that might suggest anything otherwise.

What in COVID changed from end of July when the game was last show to today, couple weeks later? So much changed in couple weeks that over a couple months delay is needed and that is all due to COVID? Do you really want us to believe it?

Want to bet the game will have a much better graphical showcase whenever it release?

They are delaying the game so it can look as good as it can, just like was expected before they showed in July. They are blaiming COVID because that is the easy thing to do. Even if on the forum there were some people totally thinking it would be possible to give a graphical overhaul on the title in a couple months left for gold (prior to the delay).

Ryuu96 said:

Sure, and what in COVID changed in the last couple weeks that changed the release date from the July event to today?

They did hire that support studio that made Saints Row 3 remastered. I get your point but I wouldn’t dismiss their covid reason as a mere blanket excuse.

Never underestimate the power of denial. “It just HAS to be done by X time for launch” mentality that led to a point where no amount of crunch could make the deadline possible.   Plus I feel a lot of the post demo feedback that they got added to the list of things to tweak. One popular example was the armor on the Brutes looking “plastic”, yet another thing to fix. 

Sure this points to time management incompetence because historically they made great updates to Halo 5 and MCC years after release. This is just the hand we were dealt, where covid conditions were stacked on top of their usual problems and reality finally set in. 



Xbox: Best hardware, Game Pass best value, best BC, more 1st party genres and multiplayer titles. 

 

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vivster on 12 August 2020

Crackdown 3.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

KiigelHeart on 12 August 2020
vivster said:
Crackdown 3.

Well they did improve it visually quite a bit so why not.



yvanjean on 12 August 2020
zero129 said:
eva01beserk said:

Maybe for a pc player. But console gamers where planing on picking their series x for this game in particular. So it's good for the game not good for the Xbox. 

But... but Sony fans have been telling me no one is going to buy a Series X for Halo Inf since its also on XBOne and PC and now your telling me that was just all lies? ;-D Consistency.

haha got them :P



yvanjean on 12 August 2020
JRPGfan said:
d21lewis said:
With that said, if you have $500 +$60 for a game (let's say $600, total because of taxes), what PS5 or XSX game are you guys hyped for on day one?

Me, personally? Not a goddam thing. And I wasn't hyped for Halo, either. If I did buy new hardware, it would have been because of backwards compatibility or FoMO. I just played Until Dawn yesterday and, while it looked rough at times, most of the time it still looked pretty damn amazing.

I'm not too hyped by anything the 9th gen is showing.

Astro Playroom, Deathloop, Kena: Bridge of spirits, Spiderman- Miles Morales, are all launch titles.

That said, I usually don't day1. So.... Kena does look very interesting to me though.

The best news from the Playstation conference was that Kena is only a time console exclusive. Can't wait to play on Xbox. That's the game that appeals to me the most from the Playstation conference. 



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yvanjean on 12 August 2020
sales2099 said:
Just had a thought, 343 can give us a Halo Infinite multiplayer beta around launch to boost appeal. Now that they have time they can give us a taste during a busy holiday period to stress test gameplay and servers.

I see the game getting a summer release, like LOU2.

Genius!

I played grounded in game preview and wish I just waited for the full version release. But, a multiplayer beta is perfect for the preview program and it would be a holiday hit even if it wasn't fully polished. 

Damn it, now I want Halo infinite multiplayer beta on launch day.



SvennoJ on 12 August 2020
OTBWY said:
SvennoJ said:

Experience. I have worked in the industry. Not once did a delay lead to less crunch. It does often lead to feature creep to make the product more desirable after the dealy, adding more crunch to get the extra stuff working properly as well. For example there are people expecting ray tracing to be added now as well before it launches...

First of all, have you worked at 343? If not, I am still asking for actual insider info from people that worked there.

Cause theres a ton of information suggesting the opposite is going on at Infinites development cycle, from people in charge of it no less.

https://gamingbolt.com/halo-infinite-developer-talks-about-creating-a-development-environment-to-mitigate-crunch

So other than making an appeal to people with your experience argument and getting easy likes, what actual evidence is there? 

Well that article sure is recent... On 21st, Feb. 2019

However, with the upcoming Halo Infinite – which also uses a completely new engine, incidentally – 343 Industries have allowed themselves to take their time with development, as is evidenced by the longer gap between it and its predecessor.

“That’s why we’ve taken a bit more time—usually it’s three years between every Halo—to really do the investment in the engine and the tools and pipeline, and we’re still working on it,” Ross said. “But we showed it at E3 last year, and it is basically trying to create an environment that we can build the game better, faster, and ideally, you know, prevent crunch. I think there will always be with any game, I think there will be times where we need to work longer hours. But I think that we need to be really deliberate with that because it’s not fair to the team, and the team doesn’t want to do it. And so we’re trying to work out how do we create the best environment to hopefully mitigate that.”

Seems like the typical planning failure that always happens with software development. Also hiring an extra studio last minute to help out doesn't mean less crunch, often it creates more headaches. It's a band aid trying to get things finished quickly yet adds a lot of complexity and subsequently more stress to development.

Anyway I've heard the above story too many times, crunch is never directly mandated, and every new project starts with the best intentions to avoid crunch, yet it always ends up with crunch time. Now if they delay the game for a full year without adding extra features like ray tracing, then I'll believe they did it to avoid crunch.

This sounds like crunch time to me
https://www.vg247.com/2020/07/31/halo-infinite-devs-work-on-graphics/

“In many ways, we are in agreement here – we do have work to do to address some of these areas and raise the level of fidelity and overall presentation for the final game.”

“While some of the feedback was expected and speaks to areas already in progress, other aspects of the feedback have brought new opportunities and considerations to light that the team is taking very seriously and working to assess.”

It goes on to state the team is working to address some of the feedback around “detail, clarity, and overall fidelity.” to make sure the game features a “beautiful world for players to explore” when the game releases.

Overhauling the assets, lighting etc when the game was nearly finished, that's a lot of work.



Btw what are likes for on this site other than spamming notifications lol. (turned it off now so I actually notice messages instead of tuning out the !)



OTBWY on 12 August 2020
SvennoJ said:
OTBWY said:

First of all, have you worked at 343? If not, I am still asking for actual insider info from people that worked there.

Cause theres a ton of information suggesting the opposite is going on at Infinites development cycle, from people in charge of it no less.

https://gamingbolt.com/halo-infinite-developer-talks-about-creating-a-development-environment-to-mitigate-crunch

So other than making an appeal to people with your experience argument and getting easy likes, what actual evidence is there? 

Well that article sure is recent... On 21st, Feb. 2019

However, with the upcoming Halo Infinite – which also uses a completely new engine, incidentally – 343 Industries have allowed themselves to take their time with development, as is evidenced by the longer gap between it and its predecessor.

“That’s why we’ve taken a bit more time—usually it’s three years between every Halo—to really do the investment in the engine and the tools and pipeline, and we’re still working on it,” Ross said. “But we showed it at E3 last year, and it is basically trying to create an environment that we can build the game better, faster, and ideally, you know, prevent crunch. I think there will always be with any game, I think there will be times where we need to work longer hours. But I think that we need to be really deliberate with that because it’s not fair to the team, and the team doesn’t want to do it. And so we’re trying to work out how do we create the best environment to hopefully mitigate that.”

Seems like the typical planning failure that always happens with software development. Also hiring an extra studio last minute to help out doesn't mean less crunch, often it creates more headaches. It's a band aid trying to get things finished quickly yet adds a lot of complexity and subsequently more stress to development.

Anyway I've heard the above story too many times, crunch is never directly mandated, and every new project starts with the best intentions to avoid crunch, yet it always ends up with crunch time. Now if they delay the game for a full year without adding extra features like ray tracing, then I'll believe they did it to avoid crunch.

This sounds like crunch time to me
https://www.vg247.com/2020/07/31/halo-infinite-devs-work-on-graphics/

“In many ways, we are in agreement here – we do have work to do to address some of these areas and raise the level of fidelity and overall presentation for the final game.”

“While some of the feedback was expected and speaks to areas already in progress, other aspects of the feedback have brought new opportunities and considerations to light that the team is taking very seriously and working to assess.”

It goes on to state the team is working to address some of the feedback around “detail, clarity, and overall fidelity.” to make sure the game features a “beautiful world for players to explore” when the game releases.

Overhauling the assets, lighting etc when the game was nearly finished, that's a lot of work.



Btw what are likes for on this site other than spamming notifications lol. (turned it off now so I actually notice messages instead of tuning out the !)

Excuse me but, the article being from last year pretty much doesn't mean anything since it says right there that this development cycle is taking longer than the others cause of these concerns. I have no indication that anything has changed in the mean time.

"Anyway I've heard the above story too many times, crunch is never directly mandated, and every new project starts with the best intentions to avoid crunch, yet it always ends up with crunch time. Now if they delay the game for a full year without adding extra features like ray tracing, then I'll believe they did it to avoid crunch."

But if they addressed it, isn't that already a marker that goes against this notion? I mean, they very clearly said that they went working on a new engine to ease difficulties that come with crunch. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt instead of speculating that they are in deep crunch?

"Overhauling the assets, lighting etc when the game was nearly finished, that's a lot of work."

Sorry but what? Overhauling means you take pretty drastic measures and that part you quoted doesn't really indicate that they have to start anew on those assets and lighting and such. What if it's tweaking and adjusting existing assets? I mean, they also say they were expecting feedback, that doesn't give me the idea that they are in a panic and crunching to fix things.



OTBWY on 12 August 2020
RolStoppable said:
OTBWY said:

Excuse me but, the article being from last year pretty much doesn't mean anything since it says right there that this development cycle is taking longer than the others cause of these concerns. I have no indication that anything has changed in the mean time.

"Anyway I've heard the above story too many times, crunch is never directly mandated, and every new project starts with the best intentions to avoid crunch, yet it always ends up with crunch time. Now if they delay the game for a full year without adding extra features like ray tracing, then I'll believe they did it to avoid crunch."

But if they addressed it, isn't that already a marker that goes against this notion? I mean, they very clearly said that they went working on a new engine to ease difficulties that come with crunch. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt instead of speculating that they are in deep crunch?

"Overhauling the assets, lighting etc when the game was nearly finished, that's a lot of work."

Sorry but what? Overhauling means you take pretty drastic measures and that part you quoted doesn't really indicate that they have to start anew on those assets and lighting and such. What if it's tweaking and adjusting existing assets? I mean, they also say they were expecting feedback, that doesn't give me the idea that they are in a panic and crunching to fix things.

They aren't being given the benefit of the doubt because the usual outcome is crunch, regardless of what a studio head says. Microsoft will need Halo Infinite sooner than later, especially because there are no other new games that can fill its spot.

It's all conjecture since for one, they already acknowledged the problem of crunch before and specifically talked about how to address it, and two, hiring more hands to help rather gives an indication of the opposite. So I am still waiting on something that indicates this delay is paired with crunch. Unless of course someone makes the argument that all delays have crunch, which is weak (and a generalization). 



goopy20 on 12 August 2020

What baffles me the most is how out of touch MS seems to be with what they're showcasing. First they publicly apologize for the May event, saying they learned from it and that they would do better in July. Then they build the whole July event around Halo Infinite, and again they are apologizing, and now even delaying their flagship launch title. Its like they don't know what they're doing and are caught by surprise by the terrible feed back they're getting from the gaming community.

I'm telling yas, their cross gen strategy is biting them in the ass and they're finally starting to realize that 4k and 120fps just isn't good enough. I just hope they can still turn things around and drop the whole "we're not leaving anyone behind" thing.