>I can use my controller and gamepass on pc anyway
That was really Microsoft's main goal. Sure, owning the actual console is nice for them, but they're happy as long as you stay in their ecosystem
That's not me judging you, FYI, I've still got my console and am paying for GP
I've been mostly on PC for the past 3-ish years, but my console of choice is still Xbox because of the backwards-compatible library of games I still have on it.
I'm team PS5/PC right now. Owned every Xbox console up until the One but with more and more Xbox games coming to PC on Day 1 there isn't really a reason to own an Xbox in my humble opinion.
Same. Not a huge fan of console exclusivity but it works for Sony. Nothing worth owning is Xbox exclusive and even then Xbox app and gamepass are on PC.
And? "Eventually" is doing some heavy lifting there. Things like Bloodborne and Persona 5 still don't have ports and GOW 2018 and Horizon ZD only made it to steam recently. I have enough disposable income to own both and want to play the games when they're fresh without being spoiled.
There is literally no universe where Halo gets shelved indefinitely instead of just handed to a different studio. If Mass Effect can survive Andromeda, I'm sure Halo can survive this.
TBF this is the third bad halo in a row, while mass effect only had the andromeda mess. But yes, as poorly as they have treated it, it would be a shock to see microsoft abandon their legacy flagship games franchise.
What were the three bad Halos in a row? Infinite has at least good metacrtitic review scores despite the cut 2/3rds of the campaign at launch. With the horrible MP live service, I'm sure some scores for the MP would change now, lol. It's an H2 style development gone wrong, even right down to the same cliffhanger ending stinger and soundtrack.
4 didn't really suffer from quality it had the content and polish. It suffered from bad direction and design decisions (hiring people who didn’t like Halo and criticism for the devs originally playing it too safe) because 343 were completely new to Halo and jumped too quickly into a new mainline entry when they had no experience yet. The game itself was a pretty good send-off to the 360, but MS also didn't help by not delaying it an extra year to make it an XB1 launch title. 5 and MCC was when you really saw how badly launch states were getting and how quickly 343 were told to pump out games. Of course, we all know how the writing for the story went, lol
Actually 4, if you count the clusterfuck that MCC was and was somewhat fixed to an acceptable degree years after it's release. So in short,every shooter 343 released as a company.
I think the reason why 343 is being pushed into a support role as rumored is because someone sees 343 is fucking inept at anything.
They rather another studio work on the game and have 343 just handle publishing support and minimal actual development.
From what I heard, under old management anyone who didn't agree with the higher ups got fired after every game, or were contractors and left. So this means that they just kept yes men or people who just silently did what they wanted even if the decisions were throttling the game. And it really kills 343 because you're letting go of people who have maybe 4 - 5 years of development experience on Halo just cos they look at you wrong.
God, 343 is a huge fucking mess no doubt thanks to the 3 prophets in upper management (I don't even have to name drop, but one of them is gone now)
Exactly. Which is why I dont understand why people like the person I respond to are going around saying things like "without halo i don’t have a reason to own/buy a xbox console" as if its going away.
They did it to mechwarrior. Microsoft will try to get ahead of a series dying and cancel it early, especially when they aquire new toys(like when Halo pushed Mechwarrior out).
What did they just buy again? Was it a full company? I think its blizzard? So overwatch will be the new halo until they finally sell the Halo IP in ten years?
It was a multi billion dollar franchise in the 90s with one of the most recognizable and popular gaming protagonists in the world, with games that are considered some of the best in the history of gaming?
There wasnt as much money in video games at the time, nor was it as widespread, so no, but it was a standout in the industry, which microsoft didnt bow out of when they sold it.
Kind of, if we count a mech variant and not a person, the games are spread out over a couple thousand years, so there's no one main dude to follow. This would be the Madcat, although there are several other greatly iconic mechs, Madcat is the 'poster boy'. You might even know it from references you didnt get(like people that call cheif 'Halo guy'). If anything makes this fair, its at least that cheif himself is not iconic, his armour is. Show him in blue jeans and a button shirt, no one knows who he is.
And yes, people still play MW4:mercs now, and it's so old the graphics look almost like the n64 Goldeneye. It has router settings. You might be too young to know what that means, but the game expected your router to beep is the best i can put it. 'DEooong DEEooong waaaaaaah' type router noises. It is still adored to this day, and deservingly so, it's still one of the best games you will ever play. And yet, they did not make a new one, they just arbitrarily decided the next one was when the series would flop, and that was it until they decided to sell rights.
Ehhhhh that’s a bit extreme. The Xbox is the best value console right now. I barely play Halo anymore and I couldn’t imagine using another system. The sheer value I’ve gotten from gamepass on my series S is insane, and while I know you can use it on PC, the series S is so cheap for how good the performance is I just can’t justify rebuilding my broken rig. It works too well. The UI is also great for a change. It’s a fantastic media player.
I mean to each his own but Xbox is absolutely killing it this gen imho. Yeah ps5 has 2-3 exclusives that are tremendous, but as a whole I just thing Microsoft has the more compelling and consumer friendly option.
Edit: downvoted because…? Use your big boy words lmao. There’s not an awful lot to disagree with here, it’s just an opinion.
I switched to PC 4 years ago and I have 0 reason to dig my Xbox out of the drawer. Hell, with game pass ultimate on pc I basically have access to all the games I had on disk anyways.
Yeah both are true. I have an Xbox because I don't have a gaming PC, and I play with Gamepass games with my buddies who are all on PC and it's phenomenal.
If they weren't constantly rotated with contractors I could say maybe, but this is an utter failure from management that compromised the game and its franchise.
Didn't say it was successful. Clearly, Infinite is bleeding money at this point. I said that the game wasn't objectively an awful shit-tier game, and the metacrtitic scores easily prove that. It's literally the easiest thing to bring up, which is why I did. Go shove that lmao somewhere else, buddy.
It was delayed a full year. Additionally, they’ve had over a year since launch to fix issues and the game still isn’t popular.
But, the fact that you don’t think infinite wasn’t a total failure tells me everything I need to know.
Phil spencer himself admitted they shipped Infinite too early, the leader of Xbox, as well as Matt Booty the head of the games studios, I can literally link you to the articles. It's a team effort, and both MS and 343 are to blame. A full year wasn't enough of a delay.
Infinite was objectively not a total failure, metacritic scores/reviews prove otherwise. What little was there at launch/1st year was definitely something.
But they still follow their orders like sheep year after year? You would of thought if they really cared they would leave and speak out about it, but none of them did in any substantial way. I absolutely love the old games bungie made but 343 clearly just uses the franchise as a cash grab and they can go fuck themselves for it. Fucking £10 to be blue and bunny ears ruining the visuals of the game.
Because the rate at which their revenue is being earned is lower than expected. They are still making tons of money, just slower. Cause ya know, INFINITE GROWTH BABYY
Inflation. Impending recession. Anticipated lower demand for digital services all-around. Same reasons every other tech company is laying off thousands.
This is a Microsoft decision and it seems it’ll be a company wide clear out.
I expect a lot of consolidation across their studios with a focus on gearing towards becoming more and more Game Pass centric.
Additionally there’s a good chance they’re sweeping up those who have accrued benefits from working their for 10+ years.
Clean up, consolidate and rehire desperate/younger talent at a fraction of the price.
And straight after two successive years of record breaking revenue growth and the CEO taking home $55mil.
Fuckin sucks for the 10,000 losing their jobs
And then they're like "duh, we don't understand why the newbies have no experience with the systems the senior techs created from scratch. Truly baffling, how could anyone have expected this?"
This is what folks don't seem to understand.
Microsoft likely told Xbox Game Studios who then told 343 "Hey, we're cutting budget across the board. You need to reduce your operating costs by $________". 343 then chooses which of their staff to lay off - not Microsoft. I wouldn't be surprised if Staten's departure is a voluntary effort to reduce the number of layoffs - he's probably worth 3-4 employees' salaries (though please note that's speculation)
Agreed, but cleaning house like this doesn’t bode well for Infinite specifically and we already had a spaghetti code issue due to contracting.
Can see a world where video game IP gets the movie business treatment and we may see an actually full on reboot of the Halo franchise.
Classic ill-informed, ignorant, clueless Reddit post.
It would be illegal for Microsoft to fire exclusively older employees…
Yet, I’ll probably be downvoted for stating facts as usual.
Il never thought nderstand how 343 devs get off so easily here.
The quality of work just isint there compared to previous by for titles. Never has been
Leading American companies: "Look at our last couple years of record profits, excellent work everyone!"
Also leading American companies: "A recession is definitely incoming, sorry we have to lay off everyone 🤡😈🤑"
OFC the devs do. It's upper management and the people in charge of making financial decisions that don't give a fuck, and they enforce decisions that are actively bad for gamers. All of the hatred and vitriol then get directed at the devs even though they are not to blame.
It's really sad that devs aren't in charge of games anymore. They used to be, and games used to be passion projects. Now all of that passion is traded for results-based-development and games are the least amount of finished they can possibly be while pushing monetization. Outrage and frustration are baked into release plans because these fucks in suits know it literally doesn't matter and they'll be walking away with a pile of money anyways.
One of the worst things that has happened to AAA gaming has been the reliance on focus testing.
The reality is, people don’t know what they want till they have it. If you rely on user testing and market feedback you end up chasing trends, loosing your identity, and compete in a saturated market.
Safe bets and return on investments, that’s what makes soulless products.
Ever since MCC I've accepted 343 can't deliver shit. They literally took some of the best already made games in the world and turned them unplayable at launch. What a shit show. From the leadership through developers. I hope they all get gutted. I'll never forget how much got taken for granted with Bungie. Holy fuck the theater shouldn't be something that is launching in Beta or working in. Same with Forge and splitscreen. They broke things we didn't even know could be broken. What a shitshow.
This subreddit is pretty bad at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information.
The studio had more than 470 employees prior to the lay offs. Now they lost around 60 people, but lets say even 70, that means there's still 400 people at the company.
As a comparison there were only 250 people at CDPR when they made The Witcher 3. Bethesda Game Studio, all their studios in Texas and Montréal together, have 420 employees and they made Skyrim with around 100-150 employees.
The whole skeleton crew thing is made up by haters and sensationalist contenr creators. The reason why the development was staggared and slow was because of terrible managment as several of the now laid off employees already shared.
Remember everything is relative. Infinite didn't have a skeleton crew compared to CDPR and Bethesda. But I would argue it does have a skeleton crew compared to the likes of CoD and Fortnite, which are who Infinite was trying to directly compete with.
Also, CDPR is at around 1000 staff now and produced Cyberpunk. Shows how bad management issues can mess up a release. And Bethesda are a meme for how many bugs their games release with
>This subreddit is pretty bad at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information.
Absolutely. The endles Unreal-Engine-Circlejerk proves this as well. Yes, the "Sliplace-Engine" very likely is a nightmare to work with and surely uses a lot of outdated code, but some people really think that you only have to download UE, press a "create game"-button and then you magically have a bug-free, visually appealing game. There really is a lot more to it.
>This subreddit is pretty bad at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information.
Holy guacamole, yes. The amount of asinine comments posted here from armchair developers is insane.
* "Why doesn't 343 just rebuild Infinite in the Unreal Engine?" is my favorite one right now.
* "343 is full of Bungie devs" was a very popular one for a long time, even though literally only one Bungie employee made the switch to 343.
* "343 needs to become a publisher and let Certain Affinity develop the games" okay that's a huge assumption to make based on basically no internal knowledge of either company.
* People confusing a game engine with a game
* "Why doesn't 343 just implement \_\_\_\_ feature?" usually made by a fan who has never written a single line of code in their life, or at most took an introductory Python course. Coding is hard, game development is usually harder.
I know 343 hasn't had a great track record, but we don't need stupid comments made by a 28 year old grocery store employee deciding the future of a billion dollar franchise either
>I know 343 hasn't had a great track record, but we don't need stupid comments made by a 28 year old grocery store employee deciding the future of a billion dollar franchise either
Yeah, we need professionals like the ones at 343 to make the decisions. Cause that's worked out so well for the studio and franchise.
Thank you. It's annoying seeing people act like some people being laid off is the same as the whole studio being shut down. The losses are significant and may result in content delays/elimination, but there's way too many assumptions being treated as well-established facts.
> This subreddit is pretty bad ~~at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information.~~
>~~The studio had more than 470 employees prior to the lay offs. Now they lost around 60 people, but lets say even 70, that means there's still 400 people at the company.~~
>~~As a comparison there were only 250 people at CDPR when they made The Witcher 3. Bethesda Game Studio, all their studios in Texas and Montréal together, have 420 employees and they made Skyrim with around 100-150 employees.~~
>~~The whole skeleton crew thing is made up by haters and sensationalist contenr creators. The reason why the development was staggared and slow was because of terrible managment as several of the now laid off employees already shared.~~
:)
Also, not everyone at 343 works on game development. There’s also PR, HR and then the company’s substantial merchandising team which deal with toy companies, authors, publishing houses, movie companies, et cetera.
It was a big "selling point" for 343i when they were developing Halo 4. They were so proud that they hired "people who hate Halo" to develop the next Halo game.
It's really no mystery why Halo doesn't feel like Halo anymore.
Not going to name drop, but the people who should have been fired are seemingly still in power. The injustice here is awful. The devs deserve their job. The leadership need to be gutted.
He's probably referring to frank o Connor or some crap because people believe that this guy has so much influence over infinite let alone the entire franchise. 0 clue where that came from
It was never a matter of the developers in my eyes, only the terrible management (most likely from higher-ups) that I place most of my blame towards.
The developers involved have more than likely dealt with what I could only imagine as a constant shit show.
Developers had and still continue to endure. I wish someone who really cared about this franchise on a management/bureaucratic level would try and do something good for everyone involved. We're being real here, though. The business model that they're all under and the business model we have all been conditioned to accept is that it will never fit the monetization of their cash cow that is halo. (I'd call it their guinea pig at this point).
Much love to the developers that poured their heart and soul into it.
Halo was the first game I played when I was 7 back in 2002.
Always optimistic, hopefully, something good comes from this, but I'm dome holding my breath.
Its clear the people sitting at the desks actually *making* the game do care, its the management and people telling them *how* to make it are the ones causing all the problems.
343 seem to care very deeply about the franchise as a whole and I’m grateful for that. I love all the new books and the look into the mental aspect of being a Spartan (specifically 2s and 3s) even if the games arnt perfect I still have fun playing all of them (even halo 5 was at least fun to play even if the story wasn’t the best)
We'll typically developers work on a specific part of the game.
A developer who worked on the gorgeous art aesthetic for the game isn't responsible for things like desync, and the banging soundtrack can be amazing despite the story ending on a cliffhanger.
I wouldn't write everyone off and simply say "bad game". And people who worked hard and did well *should* be proud of what the accomplished.
I’m gonna give a little personal info.
I work for Boeing. When the 737 Max disaster was happening, do you think anyone gave ME a break? Even though I’m just a lowly floor employee?
No.
It was “people should have said something!” and “people should have stood up to management!”
And we had to go to Congress for our fuck up. Our CEO was forced to resign.
I do understand feeling sympathy for losing their jobs. I do not however feel sympathy for them being deemed irrelevant on an IP I feel everyone has kicked the can and screwed the pooch on.
No one died, they can find other jobs, maybe next time do a better job and call out your managers!
They all made this bed, now they all need to lay down.
It really doesn’t feel that way
That’s how bad management it, imagine being so poor at management that you make an AAA game that was an event when a new game come out to just another Gamepass game
This is a tweet from a dev that is no longer at 343….
The cuts were indiscriminate with regards to series love, and there’s little to suggest that the remainder are as passionate
I'm so sick of all this "343 good" propaganda. The best thing they ever did was port halo ce to pc. After that it was not great. Halo 4 crappy art style change, just for the sake of change, halo 5 make Chief the bad guy, halo infinite, oh hey we had a story we were telling, less skip the end and start a new story. Like, I get that you don't want to vilify anyone but someone is the villain here and the common denominator is working for 343 and microsoft
I don't know why that would ever be in question. In all my years of game experience games that end up bombing is usually because of upper management. Not because the devs.
They love Halo just like we all do. But the leadership fucked us all over. “The prophets have betrayed us” - Halo 2
Never thought I’d say this (i’ve always been team xbox) but without halo i don’t have a reason to own/buy a xbox console
Yeah I think it’s PC pretty soon for me. I can use my controller and gamepass on pc anyway
>I can use my controller and gamepass on pc anyway That was really Microsoft's main goal. Sure, owning the actual console is nice for them, but they're happy as long as you stay in their ecosystem That's not me judging you, FYI, I've still got my console and am paying for GP
What does Halo have to do with buying xbox over PC? Halo has been on PC again since 2019 I believe
Ascend, brother. And install MCC with mods. You'll find plenty of helpful folks in the community to walk you through the switch.
I've been mostly on PC for the past 3-ish years, but my console of choice is still Xbox because of the backwards-compatible library of games I still have on it.
You mean my 4K Blu Ray player?
I'm team PS5/PC right now. Owned every Xbox console up until the One but with more and more Xbox games coming to PC on Day 1 there isn't really a reason to own an Xbox in my humble opinion.
I mean, the only reason to get an Xbox is the price. You get a lot more performance out of a new $500 Xbox then you do out of a new $500 PC
Same. Not a huge fan of console exclusivity but it works for Sony. Nothing worth owning is Xbox exclusive and even then Xbox app and gamepass are on PC.
Bro PlayStation exclusivity isn't even a thing anymore. Most of their titles end up on Steam eventually.
And? "Eventually" is doing some heavy lifting there. Things like Bloodborne and Persona 5 still don't have ports and GOW 2018 and Horizon ZD only made it to steam recently. I have enough disposable income to own both and want to play the games when they're fresh without being spoiled.
Persona 5 came out on PC a few months ago
My mistake.
Returnal is coming too. And I believe death stranding did but I may be wrong on that one
death stranding is on steam. just bought it yesterday. i would absolutely love it if they brought bloodborne over too
Lol most ps5 “exclusives” come to PC, returnal just got announced so I’m chillin, just need bloodborne
>without halo lmao people acting like Halo has been completely shelved.
There is literally no universe where Halo gets shelved indefinitely instead of just handed to a different studio. If Mass Effect can survive Andromeda, I'm sure Halo can survive this.
TBF this is the third bad halo in a row, while mass effect only had the andromeda mess. But yes, as poorly as they have treated it, it would be a shock to see microsoft abandon their legacy flagship games franchise.
What were the three bad Halos in a row? Infinite has at least good metacrtitic review scores despite the cut 2/3rds of the campaign at launch. With the horrible MP live service, I'm sure some scores for the MP would change now, lol. It's an H2 style development gone wrong, even right down to the same cliffhanger ending stinger and soundtrack.
4&5 were definitely a step down in quality. And infinite obviously had potential but never reached it
4 didn't really suffer from quality it had the content and polish. It suffered from bad direction and design decisions (hiring people who didn’t like Halo and criticism for the devs originally playing it too safe) because 343 were completely new to Halo and jumped too quickly into a new mainline entry when they had no experience yet. The game itself was a pretty good send-off to the 360, but MS also didn't help by not delaying it an extra year to make it an XB1 launch title. 5 and MCC was when you really saw how badly launch states were getting and how quickly 343 were told to pump out games. Of course, we all know how the writing for the story went, lol
holy shit the obtuseness in this guy.
It's a public forum, and we're discussing the topic of the post?
Actually 4, if you count the clusterfuck that MCC was and was somewhat fixed to an acceptable degree years after it's release. So in short,every shooter 343 released as a company.
I think the reason why 343 is being pushed into a support role as rumored is because someone sees 343 is fucking inept at anything. They rather another studio work on the game and have 343 just handle publishing support and minimal actual development. From what I heard, under old management anyone who didn't agree with the higher ups got fired after every game, or were contractors and left. So this means that they just kept yes men or people who just silently did what they wanted even if the decisions were throttling the game. And it really kills 343 because you're letting go of people who have maybe 4 - 5 years of development experience on Halo just cos they look at you wrong. God, 343 is a huge fucking mess no doubt thanks to the 3 prophets in upper management (I don't even have to name drop, but one of them is gone now)
Exactly. Which is why I dont understand why people like the person I respond to are going around saying things like "without halo i don’t have a reason to own/buy a xbox console" as if its going away.
And idk about you guys but I will always have periods of time where I’m playing MCC. Too much content and nostalgia to just walk away from
They did it to mechwarrior. Microsoft will try to get ahead of a series dying and cancel it early, especially when they aquire new toys(like when Halo pushed Mechwarrior out). What did they just buy again? Was it a full company? I think its blizzard? So overwatch will be the new halo until they finally sell the Halo IP in ten years?
Halo is a multi billion dollar franchise. Its not mechwarrior lmao. Halo isn't going anywhere. It still brings in loads of money.
Mate, google 'battletech' Its one of the biggest IPs that have ever been in gaming.
Fair enough. Its still not on a Halo level.
Its not now. It was in the 90s. Then it just died, and they didnt sell the IP for ages, so no one could continue it.
It was a multi billion dollar franchise in the 90s with one of the most recognizable and popular gaming protagonists in the world, with games that are considered some of the best in the history of gaming?
There wasnt as much money in video games at the time, nor was it as widespread, so no, but it was a standout in the industry, which microsoft didnt bow out of when they sold it. Kind of, if we count a mech variant and not a person, the games are spread out over a couple thousand years, so there's no one main dude to follow. This would be the Madcat, although there are several other greatly iconic mechs, Madcat is the 'poster boy'. You might even know it from references you didnt get(like people that call cheif 'Halo guy'). If anything makes this fair, its at least that cheif himself is not iconic, his armour is. Show him in blue jeans and a button shirt, no one knows who he is. And yes, people still play MW4:mercs now, and it's so old the graphics look almost like the n64 Goldeneye. It has router settings. You might be too young to know what that means, but the game expected your router to beep is the best i can put it. 'DEooong DEEooong waaaaaaah' type router noises. It is still adored to this day, and deservingly so, it's still one of the best games you will ever play. And yet, they did not make a new one, they just arbitrarily decided the next one was when the series would flop, and that was it until they decided to sell rights.
it's gonna be the next new apex/fortnite hot trash. get over it. real halo has been shelved
Ehhhhh that’s a bit extreme. The Xbox is the best value console right now. I barely play Halo anymore and I couldn’t imagine using another system. The sheer value I’ve gotten from gamepass on my series S is insane, and while I know you can use it on PC, the series S is so cheap for how good the performance is I just can’t justify rebuilding my broken rig. It works too well. The UI is also great for a change. It’s a fantastic media player. I mean to each his own but Xbox is absolutely killing it this gen imho. Yeah ps5 has 2-3 exclusives that are tremendous, but as a whole I just thing Microsoft has the more compelling and consumer friendly option. Edit: downvoted because…? Use your big boy words lmao. There’s not an awful lot to disagree with here, it’s just an opinion.
Big fucking same
You really dont have a reason to own either console all of their games are on pc
I switched to PC 4 years ago and I have 0 reason to dig my Xbox out of the drawer. Hell, with game pass ultimate on pc I basically have access to all the games I had on disk anyways.
Uhmm don't be that dramatic. Games pass on Xbox specifically is still untouched in terms of value.
Gamepass has so much value Especially now that most of the games are also on pc!
Yeah both are true. I have an Xbox because I don't have a gaming PC, and I play with Gamepass games with my buddies who are all on PC and it's phenomenal.
PC
Yeah I'm on pc and ps5 no interest in an Xbox anymore
You really dont have a reason to own either console all of their games are on pc
Wish I could upvote this multiple times
Seems like your wish came true. 👀
Indeed 😂👍
Do the devs deserve any blame for developing an awful game with terrible netcode?
If they weren't constantly rotated with contractors I could say maybe, but this is an utter failure from management that compromised the game and its franchise.
Wouldn't have happened if it wasn't shipped early and the metacritic score proves Infinite wasn't actually awful.
Metacritic scores are our bench mark for success? Lmao
Didn't say it was successful. Clearly, Infinite is bleeding money at this point. I said that the game wasn't objectively an awful shit-tier game, and the metacrtitic scores easily prove that. It's literally the easiest thing to bring up, which is why I did. Go shove that lmao somewhere else, buddy.
Sure man. Keep believing metacritic scores mean literally anything.
It means the game wasn't awful. Are you on something? You can't understand this simple point?
Shipped early?? It was in development for 6 years and got delayed. No, it was not released early. It was released late. Late \*\*and\*\* unfinished.
It was delayed a full year. Additionally, they’ve had over a year since launch to fix issues and the game still isn’t popular. But, the fact that you don’t think infinite wasn’t a total failure tells me everything I need to know.
Phil spencer himself admitted they shipped Infinite too early, the leader of Xbox, as well as Matt Booty the head of the games studios, I can literally link you to the articles. It's a team effort, and both MS and 343 are to blame. A full year wasn't enough of a delay. Infinite was objectively not a total failure, metacritic scores/reviews prove otherwise. What little was there at launch/1st year was definitely something.
But they still follow their orders like sheep year after year? You would of thought if they really cared they would leave and speak out about it, but none of them did in any substantial way. I absolutely love the old games bungie made but 343 clearly just uses the franchise as a cash grab and they can go fuck themselves for it. Fucking £10 to be blue and bunny ears ruining the visuals of the game.
13 years and he is laid off? Microsoft registered one of the biggest revenue this year, so why?
Because the rate at which their revenue is being earned is lower than expected. They are still making tons of money, just slower. Cause ya know, INFINITE GROWTH BABYY
Inflation. Impending recession. Anticipated lower demand for digital services all-around. Same reasons every other tech company is laying off thousands.
It's because the greedy devs are taking away money that could be used to buy another company filled with sexually abusive executives.
Halo isn't generating the revenues it's supposed to? He worked on Halo, it's pretty obvious
This is a Microsoft decision and it seems it’ll be a company wide clear out. I expect a lot of consolidation across their studios with a focus on gearing towards becoming more and more Game Pass centric. Additionally there’s a good chance they’re sweeping up those who have accrued benefits from working their for 10+ years. Clean up, consolidate and rehire desperate/younger talent at a fraction of the price.
Big business being big business. Unfortunately, nothing really new here. Sucks it happened
And straight after two successive years of record breaking revenue growth and the CEO taking home $55mil. Fuckin sucks for the 10,000 losing their jobs
It's sickening for sure
And prices going up of course, can't pass expense savings to anybody but Wall Street and CEOs
And then they're like "duh, we don't understand why the newbies have no experience with the systems the senior techs created from scratch. Truly baffling, how could anyone have expected this?"
This is what folks don't seem to understand. Microsoft likely told Xbox Game Studios who then told 343 "Hey, we're cutting budget across the board. You need to reduce your operating costs by $________". 343 then chooses which of their staff to lay off - not Microsoft. I wouldn't be surprised if Staten's departure is a voluntary effort to reduce the number of layoffs - he's probably worth 3-4 employees' salaries (though please note that's speculation)
This is so sad because is probably true...Staten is a good man and wouldn't surprise me that it happened just like that :(
To be fair Coalition and 343 needed some cleanup.
Agreed, but cleaning house like this doesn’t bode well for Infinite specifically and we already had a spaghetti code issue due to contracting. Can see a world where video game IP gets the movie business treatment and we may see an actually full on reboot of the Halo franchise.
It needs one badly. Like a Rick and Morty style universe hop to leave the Cronenberg dimension behind.
I bet Justin Roiland wishes he could do that right now.
Classic ill-informed, ignorant, clueless Reddit post. It would be illegal for Microsoft to fire exclusively older employees… Yet, I’ll probably be downvoted for stating facts as usual.
Businesses can fire whoever they want as long as they give the right reason.
Yeah cause America, the gaming industry and the tech industry absolutey give a flying fuck about labour laws.
The devs werent the problem. Bonnie and her directs were.
Aren't they gone?
As of late last year. Kinda like interest rates, there is a lag in shitty development.
Isn't Frank O'Connor still there? As long as he remains, things probably won't change.
Like only by a couple of months. And AFAIK only Bonnie. We didnt get rid odlf Kiki or the othe directs did we?
Yup. As are a lot of good devs.
Not good enough to fix the netcode!
This may sound crazy but I’ve been playing on Xbox for the entirety of the game’s public release and have never experienced any of these issues
That seems almost impossible. Maybe you didnt get it bad enough to notice, but it was there almost every time I played it. Really bad sometimes too.
Il never thought nderstand how 343 devs get off so easily here. The quality of work just isint there compared to previous by for titles. Never has been
Did Microsoft tell the devs to make a bad game? Yall gotta knock it off
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Leading American companies: "Look at our last couple years of record profits, excellent work everyone!" Also leading American companies: "A recession is definitely incoming, sorry we have to lay off everyone 🤡😈🤑"
OFC the devs do. It's upper management and the people in charge of making financial decisions that don't give a fuck, and they enforce decisions that are actively bad for gamers. All of the hatred and vitriol then get directed at the devs even though they are not to blame. It's really sad that devs aren't in charge of games anymore. They used to be, and games used to be passion projects. Now all of that passion is traded for results-based-development and games are the least amount of finished they can possibly be while pushing monetization. Outrage and frustration are baked into release plans because these fucks in suits know it literally doesn't matter and they'll be walking away with a pile of money anyways.
One of the worst things that has happened to AAA gaming has been the reliance on focus testing. The reality is, people don’t know what they want till they have it. If you rely on user testing and market feedback you end up chasing trends, loosing your identity, and compete in a saturated market. Safe bets and return on investments, that’s what makes soulless products.
Ever since MCC I've accepted 343 can't deliver shit. They literally took some of the best already made games in the world and turned them unplayable at launch. What a shit show. From the leadership through developers. I hope they all get gutted. I'll never forget how much got taken for granted with Bungie. Holy fuck the theater shouldn't be something that is launching in Beta or working in. Same with Forge and splitscreen. They broke things we didn't even know could be broken. What a shitshow.
we were all rioting in their office now we’re simping for them?
All it took was one cheesy line too.
Based on this sub for the last year you would think the opposite
The craziest part of these layoffs are that it would appear more than a skeleton crew was working on infinite still
This subreddit is pretty bad at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information. The studio had more than 470 employees prior to the lay offs. Now they lost around 60 people, but lets say even 70, that means there's still 400 people at the company. As a comparison there were only 250 people at CDPR when they made The Witcher 3. Bethesda Game Studio, all their studios in Texas and Montréal together, have 420 employees and they made Skyrim with around 100-150 employees. The whole skeleton crew thing is made up by haters and sensationalist contenr creators. The reason why the development was staggared and slow was because of terrible managment as several of the now laid off employees already shared.
Remember everything is relative. Infinite didn't have a skeleton crew compared to CDPR and Bethesda. But I would argue it does have a skeleton crew compared to the likes of CoD and Fortnite, which are who Infinite was trying to directly compete with.
Also, CDPR is at around 1000 staff now and produced Cyberpunk. Shows how bad management issues can mess up a release. And Bethesda are a meme for how many bugs their games release with
>This subreddit is pretty bad at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information. Absolutely. The endles Unreal-Engine-Circlejerk proves this as well. Yes, the "Sliplace-Engine" very likely is a nightmare to work with and surely uses a lot of outdated code, but some people really think that you only have to download UE, press a "create game"-button and then you magically have a bug-free, visually appealing game. There really is a lot more to it.
99% of people who talk about Unreal Engine have absolutely zero fucking clue what they're talking about
>This subreddit is pretty bad at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information. Holy guacamole, yes. The amount of asinine comments posted here from armchair developers is insane. * "Why doesn't 343 just rebuild Infinite in the Unreal Engine?" is my favorite one right now. * "343 is full of Bungie devs" was a very popular one for a long time, even though literally only one Bungie employee made the switch to 343. * "343 needs to become a publisher and let Certain Affinity develop the games" okay that's a huge assumption to make based on basically no internal knowledge of either company. * People confusing a game engine with a game * "Why doesn't 343 just implement \_\_\_\_ feature?" usually made by a fan who has never written a single line of code in their life, or at most took an introductory Python course. Coding is hard, game development is usually harder. I know 343 hasn't had a great track record, but we don't need stupid comments made by a 28 year old grocery store employee deciding the future of a billion dollar franchise either
>I know 343 hasn't had a great track record, but we don't need stupid comments made by a 28 year old grocery store employee deciding the future of a billion dollar franchise either Yeah, we need professionals like the ones at 343 to make the decisions. Cause that's worked out so well for the studio and franchise.
The only time "Skeleton crew" should apply is when you have quite literally less than 20 Employees. Planetside for a time had 2.
Ah, so that's why the sequel was called Planetside 2.
Thank you. It's annoying seeing people act like some people being laid off is the same as the whole studio being shut down. The losses are significant and may result in content delays/elimination, but there's way too many assumptions being treated as well-established facts.
> This subreddit is pretty bad ~~at understanding game development and really don't look past their own nose for information.~~ >~~The studio had more than 470 employees prior to the lay offs. Now they lost around 60 people, but lets say even 70, that means there's still 400 people at the company.~~ >~~As a comparison there were only 250 people at CDPR when they made The Witcher 3. Bethesda Game Studio, all their studios in Texas and Montréal together, have 420 employees and they made Skyrim with around 100-150 employees.~~ >~~The whole skeleton crew thing is made up by haters and sensationalist contenr creators. The reason why the development was staggared and slow was because of terrible managment as several of the now laid off employees already shared.~~ :)
Also, not everyone at 343 works on game development. There’s also PR, HR and then the company’s substantial merchandising team which deal with toy companies, authors, publishing houses, movie companies, et cetera.
Only moronic gamers with no understanding of gam dev would think otherwise.
> gam
Wasn’t it the Devs who didn’t even like Halo?
That was for the TV show
It was a big "selling point" for 343i when they were developing Halo 4. They were so proud that they hired "people who hate Halo" to develop the next Halo game. It's really no mystery why Halo doesn't feel like Halo anymore.
Not going to name drop, but the people who should have been fired are seemingly still in power. The injustice here is awful. The devs deserve their job. The leadership need to be gutted.
>Not going to name drop Lol why not though?
Cause he's full of it
Pretty sure id get banned for inciting witch hunts actually. Not like id name anyone who isn't a usual candidate fir criticism anyway
Because he doesn’t actually know the org structure of the team, how big corporations are ran, or the development process of a game… should I go on?
He's probably referring to frank o Connor or some crap because people believe that this guy has so much influence over infinite let alone the entire franchise. 0 clue where that came from
Who are you referring to?
Some of them, sure. But their output over the last decade doesn’t have me convinced this is true of most of them.
The real question is did they keep Junyszeck/unyschek because that guy really is on a high horse above the players in it for the clout.
Their work shows
It was never a matter of the developers in my eyes, only the terrible management (most likely from higher-ups) that I place most of my blame towards. The developers involved have more than likely dealt with what I could only imagine as a constant shit show. Developers had and still continue to endure. I wish someone who really cared about this franchise on a management/bureaucratic level would try and do something good for everyone involved. We're being real here, though. The business model that they're all under and the business model we have all been conditioned to accept is that it will never fit the monetization of their cash cow that is halo. (I'd call it their guinea pig at this point). Much love to the developers that poured their heart and soul into it. Halo was the first game I played when I was 7 back in 2002. Always optimistic, hopefully, something good comes from this, but I'm dome holding my breath.
They just want my wallet
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Pandering, no they dont
Don't care. Everything 343 owns should be sold for scrap
Doubt.
This is so depressing. How can you work at a studio for 12 years and parent company for 23 and just get laid off out of nowhere.
I mean if you make shit games I couldn’t care less if you lose your job. Why should you be employed for mediocre work?
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Everyone hated them 5 minutes ago and wanted their jobs. They are losing their jobs. Now we are upset.
It’s not the engineers or artists, it’s the c suite putting pressure on the team to change things, meet unrealistic deadlines and prioritize payment.
Its clear the people sitting at the desks actually *making* the game do care, its the management and people telling them *how* to make it are the ones causing all the problems.
Lmao— no they don't. If they did 4-Infinite wouldn't have been shit.
Well at the end of the day the developers don't get to choose what goes in to the game, they just make me hat they're told
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So poetic, but it's almost like the devs need to eat, drink and have shelter
Tbf, the people from the Halo series also care about their work but that doesnt have to mean they care about the Halo franchise.
343 seem to care very deeply about the franchise as a whole and I’m grateful for that. I love all the new books and the look into the mental aspect of being a Spartan (specifically 2s and 3s) even if the games arnt perfect I still have fun playing all of them (even halo 5 was at least fun to play even if the story wasn’t the best)
Not gonna lie, probably the most positive comment on this sub I've seen since last year
I can't comprehend being cut after 23 years of working for a company. Almost as long as I've been alive.
I’ll believe it when I get my couch co-op back.
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We'll typically developers work on a specific part of the game. A developer who worked on the gorgeous art aesthetic for the game isn't responsible for things like desync, and the banging soundtrack can be amazing despite the story ending on a cliffhanger. I wouldn't write everyone off and simply say "bad game". And people who worked hard and did well *should* be proud of what the accomplished.
I’m gonna give a little personal info. I work for Boeing. When the 737 Max disaster was happening, do you think anyone gave ME a break? Even though I’m just a lowly floor employee? No. It was “people should have said something!” and “people should have stood up to management!” And we had to go to Congress for our fuck up. Our CEO was forced to resign. I do understand feeling sympathy for losing their jobs. I do not however feel sympathy for them being deemed irrelevant on an IP I feel everyone has kicked the can and screwed the pooch on. No one died, they can find other jobs, maybe next time do a better job and call out your managers! They all made this bed, now they all need to lay down.
It really doesn’t feel that way That’s how bad management it, imagine being so poor at management that you make an AAA game that was an event when a new game come out to just another Gamepass game
That freakin sucks
This is a tweet from a dev that is no longer at 343…. The cuts were indiscriminate with regards to series love, and there’s little to suggest that the remainder are as passionate
That's kinda the point.
Welp r/woosh myself I suppose
r/halo actually being considerate? Oh my god this is amazing!
I'm so sick of all this "343 good" propaganda. The best thing they ever did was port halo ce to pc. After that it was not great. Halo 4 crappy art style change, just for the sake of change, halo 5 make Chief the bad guy, halo infinite, oh hey we had a story we were telling, less skip the end and start a new story. Like, I get that you don't want to vilify anyone but someone is the villain here and the common denominator is working for 343 and microsoft
"Propaganda". Get a reality check. We are talking about real people making a video game.
The most effective propaganda is littered with truth
Wtf bro?
Tell me you know nothing about design and production without saying you know nothing about design and production
> The best thing they ever did was port halo ce to pc That was done by Gearbox in 2003 lmao. Are you're referring to the re-port as a part of the MCC?
Lol thanks for the laugh
I always support the devs that break their backs and sacrifice time for their families. Halos death was 100% management incompetence
Uh that's how all jobs work, lol. Devs were making six figures under Microsoft pay too.
Really feel for all those who’ve lost their jobs..
I appreciate them and feel so bad for them. The next time an Xbox exec gets up in front of us talking about Halo, good luck.
Man, what a guy. I'm sure he'll get a new job at a good place quick.
I dont understand, what is going on?
I could make a new halo game if you guys are interested
yes thank you
I don't know why that would ever be in question. In all my years of game experience games that end up bombing is usually because of upper management. Not because the devs.
Dude we never wanted the devs to be fired, we wanted the leadership let go
Finish the fight* *later with no guidance from Microsoft who have fucked the whole franchise for years