SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Back in the early days of concurrent multiplatform development, one of the biggest reasons exclusives were so highly rated was polish. The single SKU development allowed developers to polish their games far more than multiplatform games from Ubisoft and EA. Nowadays with PC ports, mid gen refreshes and cross gen ports, even first party devs can be working on at least 4 versions of the same game. In Halo Infinite's case, it's literally five versions.
The outrage over PS exclusives going to PC attracted a lot of heat from people who accused fanboys of not wanting others to play their favorite game. Gate keeping so to speak, but lost in the mudslinging was the very basic fact; Multiplatform games simply take longer to make.
Case in point, Halo Infinite. A year long delay. 6 years of dev time. 750 employees. Shipping without coop. Delaying Forge I can understand. I think previous games shipped without forge, but not including campaign coop at launch is simply unacceptable, and you have to wonder if making the game for FIVE platforms caused the team to miss their deadlines. After all, Bungie only made Halo for 1 Xbox console at a time. Let alone 5.
With Horizon, it's 3 versions, but they did develop and support the PC version of Horizon themselves so they concurrently worked on 4 games during these past five years. The port was shipped in a poor state and it took them 6 months to fix all the bugs. And had to put out a statement saying they wont be fixing anymore bugs. Much like Cyperpunk. Who is to say that PC version did not cause this delay? After all, just like Halo Infinite, it's a last gen game. It's not a new IP, but a sequel. It doesn't seem to be a complete reboot like God of War. And yet, it's taken 5 years to make. In the 4 year span from 2009 to 2013, GG shipped KZ2, KZ3 and KZ Shadowfall. 343i took 3 years to make Halo 4. 3 more for Halo 5. These are not inefficient studios. They just had one console and one SKU to worry about back then.
We have all seen that picture of around 50 women at 343i posted here as if 50 out of 750 developers are to be blamed for Halo's dated graphics, delays and lack of coop at launch. But I think we need to take into account the effects of multiplatform development, and put the blame where it lies... on the suits behind the scenes who are willing to delay games, give devs more work and hold back their vision for a few million dollars.
The outrage over PS exclusives going to PC attracted a lot of heat from people who accused fanboys of not wanting others to play their favorite game. Gate keeping so to speak, but lost in the mudslinging was the very basic fact; Multiplatform games simply take longer to make.
Case in point, Halo Infinite. A year long delay. 6 years of dev time. 750 employees. Shipping without coop. Delaying Forge I can understand. I think previous games shipped without forge, but not including campaign coop at launch is simply unacceptable, and you have to wonder if making the game for FIVE platforms caused the team to miss their deadlines. After all, Bungie only made Halo for 1 Xbox console at a time. Let alone 5.
With Horizon, it's 3 versions, but they did develop and support the PC version of Horizon themselves so they concurrently worked on 4 games during these past five years. The port was shipped in a poor state and it took them 6 months to fix all the bugs. And had to put out a statement saying they wont be fixing anymore bugs. Much like Cyperpunk. Who is to say that PC version did not cause this delay? After all, just like Halo Infinite, it's a last gen game. It's not a new IP, but a sequel. It doesn't seem to be a complete reboot like God of War. And yet, it's taken 5 years to make. In the 4 year span from 2009 to 2013, GG shipped KZ2, KZ3 and KZ Shadowfall. 343i took 3 years to make Halo 4. 3 more for Halo 5. These are not inefficient studios. They just had one console and one SKU to worry about back then.
We have all seen that picture of around 50 women at 343i posted here as if 50 out of 750 developers are to be blamed for Halo's dated graphics, delays and lack of coop at launch. But I think we need to take into account the effects of multiplatform development, and put the blame where it lies... on the suits behind the scenes who are willing to delay games, give devs more work and hold back their vision for a few million dollars.