• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection development has ceased. Reason was due to lack of microtransactions

EverydayBeast

ChatGPT 0.1
A game releases and that’s where it ends than corporations got together and nod their head at micro transactions, DLC and make sure games are “alive” after release and making sure people are bringing $ to those games post release and that’s a problem a game use to release and that’s where it was done.
 
They can't release a fucking game and move on to the next one, no. It needs to be monetized in some dumb way of course.

Corporate America at its finest. Gotta have that mostly guaranteed monthly revenue stream.

Ironically, I think games have bombed a lot more in the pursuit of live service. If a traditional release game bombs, it might have a long tail because people discover it over time. With live service, once it bombs and is discontinued, there's no point in future purchases.
 
Last edited:

Three

Gold Member
I guess they should just pay a development team to keep working on it and have no way of capitalizing on it.

It's the same shit with cars, now. Everyone bitches about connectivity subscriptions for infotainment stuff but they also want ongoing development. I guess people just assume this shit can happen for free.
The fact that they supported a remaster for 9yrs is commendable as it is. Most other remakes or remasters wouldn't fair better and could only dream of the kind of support MCC got.

Not sure why people think MS the publisher didn’t want to monetise though and that it was 343i that did. MS wanted to monetise it or shut it down if it had no revenue and 343 wasn't happy with the decision, doesn't mean MS were not on board for monetisation. The spartan points were to appease MS' requirement for continued support of the game (continued revenue) not something 343i wanted just because. There was fan backlash to that monetisation, that's ultimately the only people that didn't truly want the microtransactions in the game. Both the studio and the publisher would love that revenue though, why wouldn't they?
 
Last edited:

Bojanglez

The Amiga Brotherhood
Great collection, double dipped on it, I'd buy it again if they released it on Playstation or Switch
 

FireFly

Member
MCC has been finalized YEARS ago. They are simply playing with its corpse.
I've played it a bunch.

There is nothing wrong with it now.
The current main issues are:

- Custom games are broken
- Co-op experiences regular disconnects
- Halo 2 classic audio is broken
- Cheaters can impersonate other players and get them banned
- Matches sometimes fail to load leaving you stuck on the scoreboard
- Ranked playlists have long wait times due to matchmaking criteria being too tight

Mint Blitz has a 92 point wishlist for fixing the remaining bugs and another serious issues in a final update.


It doesn't need years of active development; just basic features like co-op working as they should.
 
Last edited:

Saber

Member
"With purchable Spartan points but it was scrapped due to fans backlash"

I can already smell customer blameshifting as an argument.
 
Last edited:

Oppoi

Member
You are fucking clueless

Development - new content - is apparently ending for MCC. It’s a collection of old games, afterall, so this isnt surprising. Maintenance Support will most certainly continue. How are the fans that bought a collection of Xbox/360 games being ‘screwed over’ if no more new content is added?

MSFS is a really silly example to use since it was launched as a live service game, has always been a live service game and has a content marketplace to generate revenue via IAPs. Similar to Sea of Thieves with Rare selling pets and livery to fund added content.

Too much outrage + too little knowledge is a bad combination.
343 wanted to continue working on it. I never said the fans got screwed over. All I really wanted to say is that you are a bootlicker.
 
Ass of Can Whooping Ass of Can Whooping now waiting for that PS5 port be like:

devil may cry pizza GIF
 
Probably worth saying in this day and age that this is still absolutely worth picking up for multiplayer, because it works flawlessly now. Definitely want to grab this on PC so I can play on Steam Deck.
 
The game released in 2014. A decade worth of updates and support is a substantial amount of work and more than 99% of games receive. I don't see the problem here.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Low tier IP once a tent pole title.

Thanks Microsoft, for being so brave.

But Halo TV series is mediocre so that's a move up from the recent developments.
 
Last edited:

VitoNotVito

Member
saying something is "a dumb fucking take lol" apparently means I have anger issues? Christ the internet is so absolutely gay now. Take me back to the 00's.
There you go…
Have a joint or something and try to relax. Stop being a douchebag. People can have different opinions to yours.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
To be honest there is forge for the community to carry on. No diff to community keeping PC games going imo
 

XXL

Gold Member
The current main issues are:

- Custom games are broken
- Co-op experiences regular disconnects
- Halo 2 classic audio is broken
- Cheaters can impersonate other players and get them banned
- Matches sometimes fail to load leaving you stuck on the scoreboard
- Ranked playlists have long wait times due to matchmaking criteria being too tight

Mint Blitz has a 92 point wishlist for fixing the remaining bugs and another serious issues in a final update.


It doesn't need years of active development; just basic features like co-op working as they should.
I should have stated, I just play it SP through the campaign and had no issues.
 

phant0m

Member
One of the best gaming comeback stories. Time to let it rest and move onto new projects, instead of trying to monetize a 9 year old game.

Comeback stories? That it took 343 6 years to "get right" the remaster of 4 games, one of which was already done by another studio (H:CE Anniversary, Saber)?

343's handling of the franchise has been nothing but gross incompetence, likely the fault of management rather than devs themselves.
 
Last edited:
It's okay for a game to be finished at some point. I'm sure they will continue to sell some copies of it over time.

The fact that GaaS games can tie the hands of studios for years, potentially even decades is one of the things I dislike about the strategy. Maybe at some point these games will hit a grove where the support development can be handled by a much smaller team than the initial build out, allowing the team building the framework to move on.
 
Last edited:

VitoNotVito

Member
Yes and I can say thats stupid. In his case quite literally objectively incorrect. And no I don't smoke weed like a loser I stick to alcohol and cocaine like a grown
Angry kid who dreams about being able to afford cocaine does not understand English.
 
Last edited:

Banjo64

cumsessed
One of the best gaming comeback stories. Time to let it rest and move onto new projects, instead of trying to monetize a 9 year old game.
Not flaming but if they want more revenue from the old games port the now excellent MCC to PS5 and Switch 2 and port Halo 5 to both + PC.

Genuinely think they’d easily get 10m+ sales.
 
Last edited:

Banjo64

cumsessed
What’s interesting is we always assume the publisher is telling developers to monetize games, and here’s a clear example of the developer wanting to monetize it lol.
Not sure that’s right.

MS have said ‘if you want to keep working on the game we need it to feature a constant revenue stream’

343 said ‘ok Spartan Points then’

Fanbase went nuts, 343 retracted and accepted the game had to be left alone.

That is the Publisher pushing the Dev to do something. Sorry if I’m misreading your post.
 

LRKD

Member
yeah who the hell wants microtrashactions in these games? I'm not even a huge fan off the passes they put in the multiplayer. Making the whole game fruity af, like why can't halo just remain tacticool? I do get it though, a lot of people want progression and content, or their tiktok rotted brains will immediately jump ship to something else.

Also, how many people does it really take to support a game like this? The passes were just recolors of years old content. Surely like 2 programmers and 3 artists could keep shitting out content over the next decade without ever hurting the bottom line. Doesn't FFXI do something like that? I remember seeing they still have occasional events and new items. They got to have like a ghost team of like 10 people who still support a 20-year-old mmo.
 
Monetizing the MCC with cosmetics was fine to me, but it felt weird to be in that ballpark with such an old collection of games. If the fans were given a choice of no longer any more dev time or monetization, then I'm sure that most would have preferred to have monetization. It's just always so unclear were on the spectrum MT's will fall that it's typically pretty safe to assume it's some scummy way of nickel and diming the user base so I don't blame the fans for the backlash.
 

Kuranghi

Member
Anyone got a link to comparison with the latest (last) version and the original games?

Last I watched they had made a big jump towards parity of effects and quality of sounds effects, etc but it still wasn't the same as the original since they are trying to jerry-rig the shitty PC ports to look like the original console releases, even after all this time it seemed better just to play the originals via back compat on at least an Xbox One X, I'm not sure if there was benefit to playing on a Series X since both can output 4K@60hz. If setting an XSX to 120hz output gave some sort of frametime lag reduction benefit even when its output 60hz that doesn't affect me as I have a 4K60 display.

Latest vid I can find is this:



The the 2021 DF video seems to be the latest super in-depth video with side-by-sides and such:



Maybe these issues seem to be meaningless to some people but Halo 1 and 2 alongside HL1 and 2, Max Payne 1+2 and other classics from that time are such important games to me, that transition from being child to adult and from living at home to living away give them a special place in my heart. To the point I've been putting off full replays of Halo 1 and 2 for a decade now because I wanted MCC to be fixed and up to the starndard of the old games in all ways, I started to replay them back in 2021 after that DF video and I just kept going "oh that doesn't seem right", or "thats missing/weird" and it took me out of it and I stopped.

I'm thinking its time to just stop caring about MCC and replay the original releases at this point. Any Halo ultra nerds here that can give me a short answer on whether they think its up to standard of original now? I don't need perfection but I do need Arbiters armor to actually be shiny like it was, AI working 100% the same, things like that.

Wait hang on, this video says that coop doesn't as of the July update and Halo 3 cutscenes are broken now?!?? Does he mean SP coop? I don't care about MP. Its a fucking headache following this games' patch progression lol:



I think I don't care anymore, I will just play the originals.
 
Last edited:

stickkidsam

Member
The collection got years of support for games spanning the past 20. More features and content were added to these games than we could’ve hoped! They say it didn’t get even more because fans responded negatively to a microtransaction system being implemented?

Donald Glover Reaction GIF
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Not sure that’s right.

MS have said ‘if you want to keep working on the game we need it to feature a constant revenue stream’

343 said ‘ok Spartan Points then’

Fanbase went nuts, 343 retracted and accepted the game had to be left alone.

That is the Publisher pushing the Dev to do something. Sorry if I’m misreading your post.
Yes what I mean is 343 DID go monetize and the outlash made them have to do a 180.

It’s funny the publisher can’t see that not every game needs monetization to be successful.

Idk why they couldn’t just add in new skins to this game that work if you’re using the updated graphics engine only or else it does defaults instead.

Surely the community wouldn’t be upset and they’d get support for this title.
 
*snip*
I think I don't care anymore, I will just play the originals.
At this point the MCC is just a great platform for modders to do some really cool stuff. I was just checking out some of the cool campaign mods available or coming out soon(ish) just the other day. There's some really interesting stuff. Halo 2 uncut, Halo 3 remake of Halo 1, etc. I'd love to do an SPV3 playthrough co-op if that were to ever come to fruition.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
What’s interesting is we always assume the publisher is telling developers to monetize games, and here’s a clear example of the developer wanting to monetize it lol.
MS: “hey, monetize it or we will cut your funding”
343: ok

Gamers: it is clear 343 was asking for it…

😕
 

FireFly

Member
It’s a collection of classic Halo games. What recurring work is there to do?
There isn't a need for ongoing work, but in its current state the game has a handful of serious bugs that affect core features of the game. I haven't seen any compelling arguments in this thread as to why core functionality should remain broken.

It would be like CDPR not releasing any further fixes after they broke melee finishers and key bindings in 2.1, because they "already did enough".

If 343 were to work on the game on an ongoing basis there is still beneficial stuff they could add, such as a custom games browser for mods, mod support on Xbox and community playlist support. If Microsoft cared about the long term health of the game, they would be best served to focus on handing things over to the community. Then the game could remain fresh with only minimal involvement from 343.
 
Last edited:

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
There isn't a need for ongoing work, but in its current state the game has a handful of serious bugs that affect core features of the game. I haven't seen any compelling arguments in this thread as to why core functionality should remain broken.

It would be like CDPR not releasing any further fixes after they broke melee finishers and key bindings in 2.1, because they "already did enough".

If 343 were to work on the game on an ongoing basis there is still beneficial stuff they could add, such as a custom games browser for mods, mod support on Xbox and community playlist support. If Microsoft cared about the long term health of the game, they would be best served to focus on handing things over to the community. Then the game could remain fresh with only minimal involvement from 343.

Holy shit, it’s still buggy? I had it on Xbone at launch and it was a mess. Years later I have it on PC and had no idea it was still buggy.

That’s crazy if it’s still messed up after all of these years.
 
Top Bottom