Can you really blame them? (343i/Microsoft on TMCC)

I started thinking about this tonight and can you really blame 343 or Microsoft for releasing The Master Chief Collection when they did? Was it really that big of a deal? Look at the release window they had, it was either release it during the peak holiday shopping season or delay it until after Christmas and suffer a dry season release.

When they first announced it they promised it would be released in 2014, people were expecting it in 2014 and as it was including Halo 2 anniversary as well, it wouldn't make much sense to release it in 2015 now would it...

What I am asking you guys is this, does it really matter that they didn't delay the game and released it in a partially broken state?

I mean would you really have rather of had nothing during the holidays and have to wait through a delay instead of a mostly functioning game that you can still play? I just don't understand the logic and backlash, the game to be in an optimally functionally state as it is now would have had to of been delayed the same amount of time it was partially broken.

What's the difference that makes it so horrible between having a partially broken game that you have and can use waiting to be fixed and having to wait for a delay so it can be fixed?

Regardless of what you may have read the collection was still in a extreme playable state. Why would anyone prefer nothing over something which was 95% where it should have been?

Well you've quickly established yourself as a lem lol

Yes. Defending broken games and greed?

A broken game is never acceptable.

Sorry what? If people knew that the MCC was gonna be completely broken for months, they would have saved their money and bought something else. Not everyone comes to Halo to play the single player.

You see greed, I see making a profitable return on a developed product. What is the big deal between a 95% working product coming to market and having to wait a few months for it to be completely fixed while in possession of it, and them delaying it for a few months with people having nothing?

Why is the former such a big deal when the outcome is the same?

yes

No, that's ridiculous. If you're going to charge $60 for a game, it needs to be finished.

It was not a 95% working product. Matchmaking was completely broken....for months. That's the main reason most people bought the game.

The outcome is not the same. I know many people who put that game aside for good because of the frustrating experience they had. I was almost one of them.

The collection was meant to be a celebration of Halo, but 343 blew it so hard.

they don't have nothing. they have other games that are more worth their time than a broken game. would you want a car thats 95% working? of course not.

MP being completely out of operation is not 95% functioning

It wasn't completely out of operation, the multiplayer worked perfectly and if you partied with people you could play online without issue, the match making system did not work so great however.

It was money they would have spent on it anyways, why not just shelve the game until it's fixed? I mean what's the difference between it being shelved and it being delayed when you already had money dedicated to it to begin with?

I think a lot of you people have been and continue to over dramatize the gravity of this situation.

Oh lawd...

Was it really a big deal? Are you fucking serious?

Damage control to the max.

Damage control? I'm trying to have a conversation here pal, the damn game came out 5 months ago...

I understand the complaints, I just don't understand the backlash when the game would have had the same end result whether broken or delayed, it would have become playable at the time it was fixed... People who were going to buy it already had $60 dedicated to it, they had it in their mind that they were going to buy it, so why is it being partially broken and in the hands of people who can play it worse than it being delayed when the reality is it would have taken the same amount of time to fix it?

So let me get this straight....

Hey devs, just sell us broken unfinished games, hyped it up and collect our money so you can then after we gave you money for it attempt to fix it later.

Are you seriously advocating for devs to sell us unfinished broken games?

As I said, a lot of people moved on. They didn't temporarily shelve the game, they retired it completely. I don't blame them.

There's an expectation that you're paying for a finished product. Should all developers start releasing games a few months early in whatever state they're in, because it'll work eventually at some unforeseen time?

They REALLY should of just made Halo 2A and sold it for 30-40$ , The MCC sounded good on paper but wasn't necessary and they could of released Halo 3A in 2017.

Broken games are now starting to appear like a normal thing...and that's just not okay...and wtf is with all the remasters?

It's unacceptable. It only encourages other publishers to do the same thing.

Yes? Charging full price for a product that does not function as advertised or intended is called customer fraud. it is illegal and punishable. I cannot believe you are actually even contemplating defending this.

In hindsight, they should have just released Halo 2: Anniversary, then released the rest of the games as separate titles independently after they get each one to work. I also think they probably should have taken out on the fly graphic swaps between original and anniversary edition in hopes to increase the game's graphical performance. Same for Halo CE:A.

Anyhow, if they'd of waited until all versions worked right they'd still not have it out, so I guess it's probably better just to have released it as is and have functionality to the titles MP slowly restored, at least people can enjoy the campaigns which is mostly what I wanted it for anyways so I'm glad its out already... though, admittedly it's still in my backlist, was waiting for another friend to get it so we can co-op campaign through Halo 2.

"What I am asking you guys is this, does it really matter that they didn't delay the game and released it in a partially broken state?"

This can't be a serious question....

A developed product? Where? You mean under-developed product?

Wonderful job at cherry picking a single line from a complete and cohesive post completely warping the context of that sentence...

Just because the game had a set of bugs does not mean it was under-developed, it's not confirmed but it seems to me that these issues are not something which showed up in their internal testing. A lot of times with issues such as this they do not become apparent until they hit the open network and masses of people are trying to connect.

Here's one for the cows and lems. It's none of our business about the sales and what's best for the company profits. Only what is best for us, we paid enough for these silly ass good for nothing consoles, the least they deliver on is functional games if nothing else.

this infantile Lembryo always defending M$ no matter how may wrongs it commics.

This will end well, I'm sure.

Honestly, I think MCC being shit has damaged Halo's reputation. Luckily Destiny was shit too or it might taken the legs right out from under Halo.

i think destiny is infintely more popular than halo right now as a franchise i wouldn't say bungie is shit that game is being more played than call of duty now a days

halo is the game that nobody seems to be playing lately an its all 343 fault if bungie was still doing halo that shit would be the new destiny that is right now and be the most played game etc etc this is all 343 microsofts fault

@ProtossX:

Don't get me wrong, I said Destiny is shit, not Bungie. Bungie is fucking awesome they just ran into a roadblock.

The Halo name still carries a lot of weight and H5 will be a smash hit and score higher than Destiny and probably put a big dent into it's active player base until Destiny 2.

lol

This is some shit.

Broken games are wrong. There is nothing good about them.

@gamecubepad: bungie is really overrated. Halo 3 was the last really good Halo game and that was 8 years ago. ODST was bad and Reach was boring. I doubt Halo 4 was much worse than those two. Now Destiny kinda sucks too.

How much leniency do they get? If they were still 1st party, everyone apart from the lems would be saying how bad they have become.

I don't think thats a fair way of looking at it until we know for certain they released the game knowing it had issues.

Look at Driveclub. The dev said that the game worked perfectly in their tested conditions, and they had no idea it would have the problems it had until it was actually out in the wild and too late - and Driveclub had a beta too

I don't think for a second 343 knew they'd be releasing a game that would have issues that would take so long to iron out. The fact that the MCC is a product of many development studios probably made things complicated times 100.

ill tell you then

halo 4 is worse than all the other halos, they changed the way the enemies looked and how much dmg they took wasn't like the old games at all

the voice actor sounded real bad compared to the first 3 games and didn't feel like a open world at all too many narrow hall way

new enemies an guns weren't all that impressive learn them real fast an never get harder i like the old elites better they more unpredictable felt more balance

4 was the worst halo ever an its worse than destiny an all the other games bungie made

Halo CE is overrated too. I said it then and now. Level design was bad and repetitive and the ai was horrible. Bungie have made only two good games Halo 2 and the awesome Halo 3.

Bungie are overrated and average at best now. Even if they are a bit better than 343i which is arguable, since their only accomplishment is people bought the game when there was nothing better to play, it doesn't change the fact they are average.

Wtf.
There were people who paid money for it to play it and they couldn't. Yes that's bad.
It wasn't a 95% functioning game either. To call it a 50% functional game would be a stretch.
And to emphasize why it is bad if people have to wait half a year for their game to work: you can now buy it for $30.
Next time MS releases a game, just wait half a year till it works and buy it for half price. Instead of paying $30 extra to wait for the discounted functional version half a year later.
Consumers having to take into account when companies believe it is best to release a game sounds like utter corporate entitlement to me.

Overrated compared to who? Crytek has fallen and Valve won't make HL.

Reach is the very best Halo, imo. The overall package was amazing: SP, Firefight, Forge, Theater, the soundtrack...all top-notch. MP wasn't as good as H3, I'll give you that. Bungie is the god of console shooters.

I played Reach in SP and Co-Op, it wasn't nearly as fun as Halo 3 in either. Playing Halo 3 on Heroic was one of the most fun times in a shooter for me. And Co-Op in Halo 3 was a blast. Can't even bring myself to finish Reach. For Bungie to be considered anything like that, they would have to deliver a lot more than they do.

Why is a comparison needed? And I've enjoyed Crysis 2 and 3 a lot more than Reach and ODST. But they're different types of shooter.

A comparison is needed as part of our discourse. We know that Bungie is one of the most awarded and profitable studios ever. They made the Xbox brand what it is. So if you claim they're overrated, it's in your opinion of course, so I require your opinion on a superior studio so I can assess your claims.

I loved Crysis 2, but I feel like Reach did everything C2 did plus a whole lot more. As far as Crytek vs Bungie, I give Bungie the nod on that one. I think Crysis either needs to return to the jungle island setting, or become more like Crackdown FPS as far as gameplay.

If they were hard locked on the release of MCC they should have told everyone that the multiplayer was not complete. Yes, it would have affected sales at the initial launch but they might have made up for them over a longer period of time (this is looking at it with PC tinted glasses). 343 would also have picked up brownie points for honesty rather than being blasted for launching an obviously unfinished game.

The problem is the console gaming industry is all about quick hits and move on to the next big thing, where a game released three months ago is old and less people are interested in it. So a longer term strategy on sales may not have worked and I'm guessing this is what 343 were looking at when they launched without telling anyone about it being broken.

I am one of the biggest Halo fans you will meet. I can and did play the campaigns but I can accept and acknowledge there is a large group that didn't want to play the campaigns. They wanted to play the MP and it didn't work. So it hurt them. 343 deserves the flak for it. If a person hates Halo 4, good for them. I didn't, and know quite a few who didn't. But I do understand MCC collection being released when it was because this is business. We like to say "but they shouldn't have released it" but that isn't paying employees or bills. The holiday season is massive and the revenue taken in is as well. Guess what folks? There is very little integrity in business. The devs of Driveclub probably knew that junk was half assed but they released it. I know I have been a shit in my life numerous times so I try to stay grounded when looking at others.

Please stop sucking corporate cock.

They released a broken product, they shat on your hard earned money by giving you a product that did not work as intended. **** their bottom line, unless you actually have some actual investment in that company. No one is oblivious to business related decision making, but that doesn't suddenly make it beyond reproach. It can and should be criticized by the consumer when a developer/publisher releases something broken, something that doesn't do something that ..lets be real should go without saying.

The only defense for them, is that 343 genuinely came off surprised at how much of a broken mess Master Chief Collection was. It wasn't an Ubisoft scenario, where you knew Ubisoft was well the **** aware at how broken their game was.

How much a studio makes doesn't make them good. What they did for Xbox was way in the past, just like Rare or Team Ninja. They are only as good as their last game. A comparison is not a good idea, there aren't many shooters that come to mind that are like Halo. All we can do is decide if they have got better, stayed the same or got worse. They set a standard with Halo CE, they improved things with Halo 2 and perfected things with Halo 3, ODST was a bit of a poor expansion pack/game with a lazy mechanic of taking away the rechargeable shield without making a lot of other changes and Reach was designed around co-op but I feel like it misses a lot of the epic and fun set pieces that are in Halo 3. And Destiny was their lowest scoring game to date.

See, I would not have a problem if people simply labelled them as 'good' or 'above average'. But they absolutely do not deserve the continued high praise when it has been so long since they earned it.

Are you seriously trying to defend the fact that the MCC was broken on release? It cost £40 and only half of it worked for weeks. I sat and waited with a friend to play MP on the day of release, we sat for 4 hours waiting for a game... 4 hours! As Champ said, get that corporate cock out of your mouth.

Seeing how this collection flopped hard in sales gotta say lems acted very smart for once

I would hate to think they released the Game Knowing it was that broken, that would be terrible if the Knowingly sold people a broken product just so they could reach a specific release window, it would be seriously Anti consumer and peoples should nor Defend these practices.

Saying that, know matter how disturbing the TC's line of thinking is i can kind of see the logic behind what he is saying, At least people had the single player campaigns as opposed to Having nothing at all.

I purchased GTA V , sunset overdrive, and got MCC for free at the same time. Forza horizon 2 also came out around that time. It wasn't really a dry season at all. They just had to put out something Halo related to hold fans over.

There's no way, no how MS/343 released their flagship IP Halo, MCC with broken online aspects intentionally since they'd know it would for the first time tarnish the brand and piss people off. They messed up not doing a beta but I can forgive them for that since who'd a thunk they'd need a beta for older games that all performed as advertised in the past. They've had to put a great deal of time & resources into fixing things after the fact and offered a free ODST to boot but kudos to them for doing so.

Happy they did beta Halo 5 so early and I think that bodes very well for Halo 5 hitting the streets running, can't wait.

@nyadc:

Was it really that big of a deal? It sure was. It was shown and hyped up. Gamers were really looking forward to it. There were people like myself that had been planning on buying the X1 for the MCC. I was more bummed out than anything else regarding its quality. From online issues to framerate problems in multiplayer. Halo has always been known as the xbox brand exclusive that brings a level of polish not often seen outside of nintendo. On such a big project it speaks volumes as to where the xbox division was/is at right now.

Yes, it does matter. Releasing broken games should never, ever be okay. Customers are paying for a finished product, not a beta test. The fault lies squarely at the feet of Microsoft and 343. They embarked on a large scale project and shot for an unrealistic release date. They should have delayed the Master Chief Collection til it was the quality that their customers deserve.