I just assumed they were.
I feel a lot of problems of Halo Infinite's development get largely ignored, though parts like the large swaths of outsourcing were covered extensively, and the outsourcing compounds problems of using the Slipspace Engine as those contracted devs weren't up to speed with the engine like they might if they had designed the game around an Unreal Engine instead.
But back to need to outsourcing, IMO what hasn't gotten any attention was the scope of work 343 was burdened with mostly stems from Microsoft's commitment to get the Halo Master Chief Collection onto PC in a near parallel time frame, those nunerous games and their online functionality all in a narrow window, which didn't finish until less than a year before Halo Infinite's launch. Plus working through the pandemic was no doubt tough.
So, sure, using something like Unreal could have helped them way back then, now given they aren't burdened with juggling monumental tasks, I imagine switching engines may actually be counter-productive. Unless they foresee an issue to outsource to contract workers like they did while putting Halo MCC on PC while juggling Infinite's development, it's kind of pointless.
Furthermore, I'm still not sold Unreal Engine 5 is the industry game changer people are assuming it was supposed to be yet. We're still not seeing devs roll games out for it and Epic is still making significant updates to it that still tell me it isn't ready yet. We aren't really seeing the rollout of widespread industry support for it yet, though I've been assured that countless devs are plugging away at developing games for it, I'm curious if they're going through a substantial learning curve or if they are waiting for the UE5 engine to finish adding substantial updates to get the game's where they need them to be. Perhaps Epic themselves have moved their talent to making Fortnite content and utterly forgot to add more support on toward making UE5 a widely adopted industry engine they license for a percentage of sales revenue, because of the shortsightedness of Fortnite revenues and making those EGS deals.
Frankly I see it 50/50 the pros and cons of either sticking with Slipspace or going to UE5. I just hope they make the right choice, and they make that choice based on their own needs. I feel an engine switch would probably be more prompted by all the media attention centering around Halo Infinite's development issues, and might not be the best reason to force the change, and that wouldn't be a good start.
I still feel 343 is creatively capable of making a great Halo game, if circumstance doesn't interfere with their efforts there like it has in the past. With both Halo 5 and Infinite, 343 was busy with Halo MCC versions without much time to work solely on the next entry sequels. I feel a Slipspace designed game will get them there quicker as the outsourcing to contractors doesn't look to be as big as an issue given they're not juggling multiple ambitious projects. UE5 has a learning curve which becomes a major barrier, but also I'm not sold yet Epic is supporting the engine enough to make it viable for the industry at large. And wide industry adoption was kind of the whole point of using UE5 to begin with. Perhaps it really is just better they stuck with Slipspace until UE5 is widely adopted, widely supported, and it shouldn't be a problem switching engines after. Right now, planning on UE5 is a gambit, a leap of faith.
And if I wanna go all tinfoil hat about it, perhaps it's in Epic's better interest to slow roll out UE5 games since they have one of the notable online cash cows out there, and giving the industry tools to put out better and better games runs the risk of taking that away that flow of cash. Just saying, coincidence, Fortnite explodes and they're less interested making getting UE5 into mass adoption. Perhaps even the clowns at Unity figured that out, saw UE5 as a dead end and thought they could use that circumstance to muscle more money away from developers and publishers that used Unity, because Unreal doesn't look to be going anywhere at this point.
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