Halo Infinite Delayed
It feels like just yesterday that the world was dissecting the Halo Infinite trailer that was on display at the XGS, I took it at face value and assumed that some of the visuals would be cleaned up before release assuming that the build on display was far from finished. The art style along with the combat looked interesting and it looked like Halo Infinite was going back to basics with this one, while adding some modern elements such as open world and traversal. Unfortunately, this week, Microsoft had a day of bittersweet messaging with a post on Halo Waypoint informing gamers of the delay of the highly anticipated return of Master Chief. It wasn’t all bad news as they also provided a post on the Xbox Wire to give gamers some sugar to help make the medicine go down easier with a tighter release window for the Xbox Series X.
One of the first reactions after the XGS was if every game was on GamePass and if every game is playing on Xbox One then what was the benefit of buying an Xbox Series X at launch? There were some great surprises and great games shown at the showcase but there were two problems that seemed a little concerning. The first issue was that the games that did look next generation worthy had no release date and most likely we are looking at late 2021 or further for most of them. The other issue was that the ones that were coming to the Xbox Series X at launch didn’t highlight the benefits of being in line or online when they go on sale. Halo Infinite was part of this quandary. Despite your thoughts of the visuals, Microsoft initially failed to provide reason for the immediacy of being a consumer for Series X.
About a week after the XGS, Microsoft added some details to Halo Infinite after some of the information leaked regarding the game. Obviously it felt like a missed opportunity to announce some of the leaked Halo details but also to announce some of the details regarding the benefits of Xbox Series X for games that are playable on the Xbox One generation. A few of the key areas of noted improvement of playing Master Chief on the Xbox Series X was greatly reduced load times and 120 FPS, which are both two areas that the Xbox One can’t compete with.
Back to the topic at hand, over on Halo Waypoint, Chris Lee who is a studio head at 343 made a post informing fans of the unfortunate delay of Halo Infinite. “We have made the difficult decision to shift our release to 2021 to ensure the team has adequate time to deliver a Halo game experience that meets our vision. The decision to shifter release is the result of multiple factors that have contributed to development challenges, including the ongoing covid related impacts, affecting us all this year” The post goes on a little longer but those few sentences really sum up all the information that is needed.
Phil Spencer, took some time out of his busy schedule to be on Animal Talking, the Animal Crossing talk show hosted by Gary Whitta and as expected from Phil, his answers seemed quite transparent. I think one of the reasons that many people admire Phil Spencer is that he doesn’t seem like your average gaming executive. He truly loves games and it’s very admirable the way that he doesn’t minimize the competitions success whether that be the great success of the PS4 or the best first party lineup in the business with Nintendo.
Phil Spencer said delaying Halo Infinite was “a decision 5-10 years ago I couldn’t have made but now with the support that I do have to make those calls, in the long run, good for our platform, good for our studio and good for our franchises” Candor is one thing that Phil shows by telling us that earlier in the generation the game would have shipped unfinished because of how important they thought it was for Xbox but the growth of him and likely many others at the company, have shown that it’s much more important to ship a game when it’s ready instead of trying to meet an arbitrary date.
Around three months away from the release of the Xbox Series X, Phil was asked why the timing was right to delay Halo Infinite “when you’re shipping a game like Halo, it’s not just a solo release, we have a lot of marketing partners and promotions. You want to be respectful of your partners and giving them a heads up so they can plan their timeline for things they are doing in conjunction with the launch of the game” It’s possible that 343 and Xbox could have waited longer to delay the highly anticipated title but there comes a time when you know the right thing to do. They have spent years building relationships with other companies and a lot of these marketing events take a long time to put in motion and giving ample notice helps keep this established relationships great.
It’s unfortunate that we wont be able to play Halo Infinite, the first Halo in over 5 years, which is quite the wait for such a tentpole series for a company but there is never a reason to be truly mad at a developer. I’m sure the vision that 343 had for Halo Infinite was extremely ambitious, especially if they plan for it to be supported for years to come in a live service type of way.
Delaying the game cannot be a decision that comes easy for anyone, but it shows great responsibility to have the guts and ownership to delay such a high profile game. If there is anything that 343 has learned since taking over the series is that it’s probably better to delay a game and to make sure it is ready rather than to rush it out under developed which could lead to major issues. Major issues like Halo Master Chief Collection had for many years after its released as the multiplayer portion was basically unplayable.
On another blog post on Waypoint in the past few weeks they also said that due to the current pandemic and the developmental challenges that it was possible that there wouldn't be a beta, which seemed like a very bold decision to make, especially after the MCC matchmaking issues. It was this sentiment along with the lack of multiplayer shown during the XGS that had many people wondering if Halo Infinite was not going to ship as a full product. Was there a possibility of the game launching without certain aspects of the game such as multiplayer suite or campaign?
It turns out that the idea of shipping the game with only a few components was at least floated across the table. When referring to head of 343, Bonnie Ross, Head of first party, Matt Booty and himself Phil Spencer said there were “options and things that we could do, ship the parts of the game on given dates but it just didn’t feel like the Halo release that all of us would want” Shipping the game without multiplayer or without campaign would have been the wrong decision since many of the fan and critic reaction to that would be negative as it would’ve been judged as a whole with a massive missing piece or at the very least held up to previous Halo entries that shipped as a full package.
How important is shipping a console with a great lineup? Looking back on history, there are very few systems that actually launched with killer apps and even the ones had system selling software on day one didn’t set records. Off the top of my head, the original Xbox launching with Halo CE could be argued is the only reason that Xbox still exists today but only managed to sell somewhere between 20-30 million units. The other immediate system that comes to mind is the Nintendo 64, that launched with Super Mario 64, which is a game that would change the blueprint for how three dimensional games were made and it only helped the system sell around 32 million units, which makes it the third worst selling Nintendo system behind the WiiU with 13 million and GameCube with around 22 million.
Something to think about is that all three of those systems had some great games and if you owned any of those three Nintendo consoles, you probably thoroughly enjoyed your time with it and didn’t care that it didn't sell the greatest, which makes me wonder do gamers really care about console sales numbers or launch lineups for that matter. The other thing that some of those numbers display is that Halo and Super Mario 64 are the quintessential killer app yet those systems sales numbers are not great when judged against the history of console sales.
However when looking at some of the best selling systems ever, few launched with a must buy title on day one. PlayStation 2 sold 159 million units, Nintendo DS sold 154 million, Gameboy sold 119 million, PlayStation 4 currently sits at 106 million, and the original PlayStation sold 103 million. I’m sure there is someone who could make an argument for every one of this systems having a great launch title, but in my opinion, out of the top five best selling systems of all time, only one launched with a game that moved hardware and thats Tetris on the original GameBoy.
I would even entertain the argument that the majority of these systems launched with abysmal games, but it seems clear that having amazing software on day one doesn’t matter anymore and maybe never did other than for marketing purposes and for gamers to argue about. Even the PS4, which launched in 2013 as the most recent example and will likely become the third best selling system of all time didn’t have much on day one. Killzone ShadowFall and Knack were the two major, PS4 exclusive first party titles that were both fairly maligned by critics and fans alike.
Circling back to the halo delay and the launch of the Series X, when asked about the delay, Phil didn’t sugar coat his thoughts. “It’s a bummer! It is a disappointment for fans and it is a disappointment for us” Those thoughts right there are everything you need to know about Phil Spencer. They didn’t want to do this, if you’re upset think of how he and everyone else at Xbox feels. It's been five years since Halo Guardians, it’s been seven years since Xbox has been second fiddle to Sony and the PS4.
They have waited and worked so hard for this moment for so long just at the last minute to have to delay the game into 2021, which is smart not to give it another target date that you can’t be sure it can hit. It’s possible that it can still make the launch window, which on last check was around 3-6 months and if the Xbox Series X is launching mid November then mid April would be the end of the launch window. With Halo Infinite not being available on launch, the next question was will any games be fast tracked or shifted around to fill the gap, but Phil Spencer made it clear that the lineup was not moving around to fill the void.
There is a wonder how Microsoft, a trillion dollar company can fumble the messaging a few times this year with regards to the Xbox Series X. The first thing was in May, Xbox announced the 20/20 initiative, which was supposed to be a monthly feature regarding all things Series X and could sometimes be an special episode of Inside Xbox. However, in just the second month, there was 20/20 event in June. The other messaging issue was at the XGS to display Halo Infinite for almost ten minute when just a few weeks later it was delayed seems like the inside team might have had the notion that Halo Infinite might not make launch.
I understand, COVID 19 has wrecked a lot of plans for a lot of people and business but it just doesn’t make sense to announce things if you don’t need to or aren’t sure. Look at Nintendo, they don’t seem to care about the lack of Nintendo Directs or the lack of announcements for the remainder of the year, but sales of software and hardware are still very strong. I enjoy it more when a game is announced and it is out within a few months.
As for Sony and the PS5, I think they are in a good position again, even though they really don’t have any true first party exclusives games on launch either, with the possible exception of Spiderman: Miles Morales, which might be a cross generation title. If it isn’t it would certainly be a bold choice to ship that game without giving 106 million gamers on the PS4 access to it. I think the reason that the PS5 is positioned well is because of their messaging that they are truly next gen and they haven’t tried to explain that you can play any game anywhere.
At the end of the day we are once again left with the same question that many people had after the XGS and that is why do I need to purchase an Xbox Series X at launch? Sure, all games will likely look better on the new hardware, but just how much better as we haven’t seen any hard evidence yet. One of the falls biggest games, CyberPunk 2077, while it does feature “Smart Delivery” wont creature a true next generation experience until well after launch and likely into 2021. We still have plenty of time before the launch and one of the things Phil said during Animal Talking was that they “still have a few announcements to come regarding games coming to Xbox and GamePass” There is a possibility that Phil and the rest of the team at Xbox can educate consumers as to why they need to buy a Series X on day one.