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Head of Creative for Halo Infinite is leaving 343 to join Xbox Publishing

ManaByte

Banned
its not even in the top 20 on xbox most played right now.
It's #20 right now right after FIFA:
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It's also #6 on GamePass and #4 on GamePass Cloud.

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clarky

Gold Member
Well this might actually be the day Halo officially dies. Obviously the game has massively underperformed and the end times have arrived.

Sad day really.
 

Barakov

Member

Oof. It finally happened. All in All the campaign wasn't bad. The fact that Staten is leaving is a giant red flag, though.

The biggest problem they had was getting their seasons out in a timely fashion. That killed whatever momentum they had.
 

ByWatterson

Member
Well Halo Infinite is dead now. A reboot of Halo CE in 5 years by new devs is what I expect now.

Had the exact same thought earlier. It's just been too long on one trajectory that started before a huge amount of the potential audience was even born.
 

VAVA Mk2

Member
Well Halo Infinite is dead now. A reboot of Halo CE in 5 years by new devs is what I expect now.
Congrats on the promotion, Joe Staten. May Xbox Publishing flourish under your watch as Halo Infinite did before it.
He didn't cause that dumpster fire. He came in at the end to actually get a game to come out that was playable. Can you imagine what it would be like if he didn't come in and they launched in 2020?
 

Rockman33

Member
Everyone keeps saying how dead it is. Yet I play daily and the que ranges between 18-22 seconds to find a game. Sure doesn’t feel dead to me.

Not to mention the weekly mode they keep switching has been consistently very fun and unique. Especially this week.
 

Pelta88

Member
The game went from 20 million players to the community complaining to not being able to find a multiplayer match within a few months. On PC the game dropped to 2K/3K players on PC, worldwide. Insiders were telling us the financially the game was a flop and couldn't recoup. But some are acting surprised?

343i turned one of the most prestigious gaming ip into a mainstream media laughing stock. The failure here is cataclysmic and I'm surprised some thought there'd be no repercussions.
 
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Romulus

Member
Still hard to imagine Halo is consistently bad after all these years. I went from a hardcore fan to absolutely no desire to touch it.
 
Halo crashed and burned because the gameplay loop was extremely repetitive, overly simplistic, and stale. The player base started jettisoning a huge percentage of players right after the first weekend.

It had nothing to do with DLC and quick updates.
They already tried modernizing lmfao, ever heard of halo 4 and 5?

They were the biggest flops of all the games
 

Magic Carpet

Gold Member
If only that Halo Infinet budget had been used to publish other things.
Robot Chicken Nerd needs to have one of his fantasy episodes of all the games that could have been produced with that wasted budget.
Robot Chicken episodes on Gamepass would have been a better product than, Halo Infinite.
 

YuLY

Gold Member
Campaign Halo is pretty much done now it seems, most layoffs seem to be in that team and with Staten leaving, yea...

MP will probably be okish, especially since they got that BR mode upcoming, but yea...another wasted decade for us Halo story enjoyers...
 
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TransTrender

Gold Member
Joe Staten, who joined 343 in 2020 to steer Halo Infinite toward the finish line, is leaving the studio to rejoin Xbox Publishing, Bloomberg has learned
Normally this is called 'controlled flight in to terrain' but whatever, use the corporate speak which lets you sleep at night.

Disband 343.
 
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BadBurger

Banned
It's been interesting as an outside observer (Infinite was my first full Halo experience). 343i has managed to ship several games in a little less than a decade, but it seemed like the fans were never satisfied, or only remained engaged with their releases for a few weeks.

Since Infinite's release I haven't heard about any substantial content for the game. A year with nothing but some new MP maps ain't gonna cut it for a live service game. You need something to sell to justify your employment.
 

YukiOnna

Member
Staten is gone? He was the reason I had a sliver of hope that the single player side support (whenever the next update was launching) would be good.
Infinite will probably finish up and they'll come back with a new title and studio a few years down the road. A shame because the story isn't going to be resolved now.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
They already tried modernizing lmfao, ever heard of halo 4 and 5?

They were the biggest flops of all the games

With regards to multiplayer...no they did not.

Halo 4 was standard Halo.
Halo 5 tried something half modern with Warzone.
Halo Infinite was standard Halo.

And shockingly it sounds like Halo 5 had the best multiplayer of the bunch with the best player retention.

Multiplayer is now open world.
 
Quoting myself from HaloGAF -

*If ActiBliz gets completed in some way...

MS/Xbox are about to bring in a ton of assets, talent and tech. There will be a lot of IPs/licensing/collab/restructuring for a year or two post that deal closing. Ultimately 343 should have had this happen after Halo 5. Infinite and the 7 years we're pushing now should have had all this done and dusted. They should have brought in the core Halo devs, paid plenty (but worth it), and gone to town with PvE and BR. It really isn't that hard to see it in the last 5 years, 343 just chased esports and some crazy social shite Halo then their own game engine and new hardware releases hand in hand. Given the mess 343 has been project to project and game to game I'd suspect Staten didn't really want to be there anymore. At his stage of career I wouldn't want to be at a studio that is a mess tech and vision wise either.

While losing Staten is bad, him being a larger part of Xbox (what he was doing before 343 anyhow) is a "greater good" trade-off for Xbox and Halo fans. They really should just give Certain Affinity and Max the Halo games completely and 343 is purely the media/franchise/merchandise arm etc.
 
Halo is finally dead.

They won't need it when Call of Duty goes Xbox exclusive anyways. Which is probably why they are planning ahead and gutting 343 now.
 
Staten was never meant to stay he said afterwards he was going to go back to Xbox publishing cause he liked working on games like recore and others. Not to mention 343 was already bloated they had an entire pro team on staff.
 
Halo is finally dead.

They won't need it when Call of Duty goes Xbox exclusive anyways. Which is probably why they are planning ahead and gutting 343 now.
Lol you’re out of your mind this can’t be a serious take. You think they’re going to bury one of the most iconic profitable series in gaming because 60 people got laid off?
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Quoting myself from HaloGAF -

If the Activision transaction goes through then I suspect Halo will be permanently sidelined/second tier. They’ll focus their resources on COD going forward and try very hard not to make the same mistakes that doomed that franchise.

If I am Microsoft, just looking at this logically, 343 has completely destroyed the franchise. Nobody outside of increasingly older die hard give a shit about it anymore, and Infinite burned through a lot of the goodwill they had. I just don’t see why MS would see Halo as having a prominent place in their future. I think they did, before Infinite, but once that turned out to be a giant diarrhea turd, they have to adjust.
 

rapid32.5

Member
Holy crap! Infinite was great, at least better than 4. They were on the right track but ran out of steam to continue the train going. Give the franchise to Id or something, wtf is wrong with Phil and his blind vision?
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
I can't believe how much they fumbled Halo.

Fucking close 343 industries at this point.

Give it to Id software... or kill the franchise, put it in stasis
 
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gothmog

Gold Member
Phil turns off his TV after having watched the first episode of TLOU. Tears well in his eyes as he stares at his Master Chief helmet sitting on his shelf. The phone rings. He doesn't even have to look at it to know it's Satya. He just answers and says "it's time".
 
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