I called it!
James Sawyer Ford
The management downgraded an entire game because it had to be a launch game, and they still missed it by a year.
It's funny because Phil makes it seems like he's learned from his mistakes in game development and they do things differently now. This was 2019, VERY recent. In 2020 they announced Halo Infinite would be a launch game despite becoming a bit of a laughing stock at the time for how rough and unpolished it looked.
What has Phil learned, exactly? This is was their top franchise, and while it looks like they managed to salvage it into something the very hardcore could appreciate, it's not anywhere near the ambitions they had when it announced.
Listen to what Ted Price says about this:
“We face those choices all the time in the games industry,” Price said. “I think the default is to brute force the problem — in order words, to throw money or people at it. But that can actually cause more chaos and affect wellbeing, which goes against that balance. The harder and, in my opinion, more effective solution is to be more creative within constraints.”
Insomniac is probably the most efficient studio in the world right now. They have very good management practices. They have a core framework which, after it has been prototyped and approved, they don't deviate much from. There is still creativity in the process through production but it is limited and they don't have scope creep. This allows their studio to be utilized almost 100% of the time. No people sitting around doing nothing. No re-working major parts of the game.
343 in contrast just seems like a studio without strong leadership. The people there are very likely to be extremely talented, but they all seem to be going in their own direction. Too many Halo megafans that have their own vision for what Halo should be, and no one to tell them this is what it MUST be (and if you disagree, BYE). Everyone needs to be a team player on the same page. Look at what Sony Santa Monica did with the God of War reboot. They needed someone like Cory with very strong creative direction to steer that project in the right direction, set the right tone, etc. In fact, it seems like that's why their previous game failed, they didn't really know what their new IP would be and it just seemed uninspired as a result.
It's such a shame that Halo Infinite turned out the way it did. I'm glad many people enjoy it, but I look at it as a failed attempt at something much greater. The initial ambition of the reveal trailer excited me about Halo again, and the re-reveal completely gutted that excitement. I've played the core sandbox Halo gameplay many times in the past and it's time for something a bit more dramatic and modern. I can go back and play Halo 1 if I want that experience, just like I can go back and play God of War 2 if I want to play the pinnacle of old-school Kratos fun. But by the time Ascension came out people were sort of done with that style of game. It had already said everything that needed to be said before.
Bonnie Ross needs to be replaced, the failures of 343 fall squarely under her poor leadership. But of course firing her, due to HR optics and politics, is something Microsoft won't do. The practice of hiring mostly contractors (something Microsoft is very keen to do) is also problematic because there's huge amounts of turnover and no ownership of assignments. The fact that Phil Spencer kept beating the drum on forcing it to be a luanch title even all the way up to right before release just tells me the guy does not get game development and never really has. He likes to think his team is changed now, but I don't see much evidence for it. Still the same mistakes that others in the industry that actually are making ground breaking AAA games don't fall for - like, for instance, not rushing a game that isn't ready.