I think we disagree on the markers of troubled development, because I'm not assuming 343i are the worst developers in the industry.
Downgrades occur all the time - this is not necessarily a sign of troubled development. The most famous of early-gen cases of massive downgrades would be the original Watch_Dogs. There's not much in the way of corroborating evidence to suggest its development was troubled. From there, you're spring-boarding into leads leaving the project before completion, using this as sign of doom and bloom. However, look at the facts. The project was massively delayed to react to Halo 5's disastrous reception. The lead franchise writer, who helmed the story for Spartan Ops in Halo 4 - the least enjoyed segment of that game - and helmed the story for Halo 5 - the least enjoyed game in the franchise - was one of the leads who left 343i and Halo Infinite. Is this a sign of troubled development, or development becoming un-troubled?
Virtually all of your comments on Sperasoft are assumptions that spiral into the negative position. We could quite easily assume the positive position: Sperasoft's work thus far on Infinite was absolutely top-tier, and so 343i reached out to them to have them return to assist during the final stretch to help get Infinite to the quality level they want to deliver. This is just as likely. You don't re-enlist people who do bad work.
Your comments on out-sourcing, though, are absolutely dead-on. It always takes extra time to get externals up-to-par with your in-house, and during COVID, that's going to be quite the task. It's likely that 343i's management was weighed this against the work that needs doing and deemed it necessary. Not being involed, no one can comment further. However, I'm not positioning them as a saviour company. I'm positioning them exactly as their press release stipulates: contract labour enlisted to assist 343i. I try not to make baseless assumptions about things I don't know. Which is why I'm not prepared to say Infinite's development is "in a dark place".
- 343i owned the disaster that was MCC's outsourced development, and have worked tireless in-house to fix it. This is a positive for 343i, a lesson hard-learned, not a negative.
- Marketing timelines for the game are irrelevant to its progress. Remember: Aliens: Colonial Marines had a pretty good marketing campaign.
- You're actively seeking to find negative markers, not finding markers that actually exist.
The development is neither going well or un-well. It is merely progressing. No one on this forum knows the state of Halo Infinite's development - people are just parroting click-bait articles and YouTubers.
So far, all we have are underwhelming graphics from a cross-gen gaming targeting an OG Xbone and a press release about contractors in an industry famous for contractors. As I said in my previous post - when there's a
proven narrative, I'll gladly follow it. No one's proven a thing yet as far as I'm concerned.