Halo 5 Dev Says Halo: MCC was a ‘Black Eye’ for 343

The creators of Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, 343 Industries, has promised to do a much better job on the upcoming Halo 5 based on lessons they learned with Halo: MCC. 

The studio's reputation as a game developer got tanked by a bad, premature release that remains buggy and arguably unplayable in multiplayer to date. While it sees new patches every couple of weeks, players have been left unsatisfied by the company's most recent outing and worry that their next product, Halo 5, will be just as bad. 

In an interview with Xbox Achievements, Halo Franchise Development Director, Frankie O'Connor described the launch of Halo: MCC as "definitely a black eye for [the studio]." 

"“We’re not going to rest on our laurels or hide from the mistakes we made. However, I will say that the nature of The Master Chief Collection – you’ve got five different game engines, you’ve got five different studios working on it, you’ve got 343 working on putting it all together – the footprint and complexity was outrageous.

“To be perfectly honest, there were a lot of things that happened when we got it into a retail environment that we simply didn’t see in a test environment, so that’s what really caught us by surprise. We’ve been sort of scrambling to get it first in a playable stage and now we’re going to get it in a polished stage, so that people are getting what they deserved in the first place. We’re never going to back away from that or shy away from that."

O'Connor stated that the upcoming game is being developed by a completely different team as a singular product built from the ground up with new technology. The problems the game faces, he says, are radically different from anything they're currently encountering with Halo: MCC. 

With any luck, the Halo 5 beta will go as planned and the game will be released without a hitch. God knows the series wouldn't be able to take another blow.