Every Halo game from now on will have a beta, developer 343 Industries has confirmed to Game Informer.
The Master Chief Collection's significant online problems – which lasted months – led the studio to realise the importance of having a beta.
Studio head Bonnie Ross said "the original pitch that we wanted to do was sort of a war chest. Ship all four games separately. Package them up." But then the idea was broached to put them all together with a single user interface, something that the studio felt was "a magical experience when you can pull it all together and seamlessly move across games." However, Ross said the package was "very ambitious."
Being 343 Industries' first Xbox One game, Ross said there were "huge challenges". She added, "In hindsight, it would probably have been better to ship the four games separately. And I think that fans would've loved that. We wanted to do more. We wanted it to be this gift to the fans."
These challenges showed how important it was to allow people to try out the game in advance.
"There is so much we learned with the Halo 5 beta," she continued. "There is actually stuff we took from our Master Chief Collection–learnings that we were able to put into the beta.
"Going forward, you will never see a Halo game coming out without a beta. It was obviously painful for our fans and for us. But it won't happen again. There are things we put in place to make sure that we know everything, how it stands up outside and in the wild."
Halo 5: Guardians launches October 27th and will drop co-op split-screen. The game comes with 20 maps, while an additional 15 will be released for free after launch.
