A new rumor has emerged about Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
This rumor mainly comes from Rebs Gaming, who shared new information about the title from one of his sources onto YouTube.
For those who may not remember, Halo: The Master Chief Collection may be well regarded now, but was subject to the typical Xbox controversy in its initial release.
The issue revolved around bugs that ruined multiplayer at launch time. These issues were so bad that Bonnie Ross, who was head of 343 Industries at the time, issued an official apology. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft gave the original consumers who bought Halo: The Master Chief Collection one month free of Xbox Live Gold, alongside other bonuses.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection then entered an interesting period; continued active development. 343 added other games to the collection, such as Halo Reach and Halo 3: ODST, and then made a Windows port. Crossplay was originally unavailable between Xbox and Windows, but of course, it’s there now.
343 Industries was also publishing new content on Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but then they suddenly made the decision to stop production on the game.
According to Rebs Gaming’s source, Microsoft chose to end development of the title last May. They did give the developers, most of whom were contractors, advance notice that their work was ending on this title, and their contracts were not being renewed. Some of those contractors have now moved on to working on Halo: Infinite, but those workers who did not want to shift to this new game simply didn’t get their contracts renewed when July came around.
The main reason that development ended is that Halo: The Master Chief Collection did not have an ongoing revenue stream. This was something the gamers themselves were strongly against, but they may have felt differently if they had known that this would be the consequences.
Rebs’ source also made it clear that there were 343 Industries who weren’t happy with Microsoft’s decision, but it also partly came down to the company fearing a recession, that as we know, didn’t end up happening, at least for the US. Rebs’ source didn’t mention this, but of course, Microsoft also made this call while they were still trying to finalize their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.
It’s not that working on Halo: The Master Chief Collection is completely off the table; but it seems there needs to be a situation where the players would be willing to pay for new content of some sort on the title, and that they wouldn’t abandon the game just because Halo: Infinite is right there too.
Perhaps when Microsoft launches their next console, whether they’re jumping into it earlier than Sony or not, will be the impetus to work on Halo: The Master Chief Collection again, perhaps remastering it again for that newer platform. But for now, Halo: The Master Chief Collection as it exists, warts and all, is going to stay at the current state it is for quite a while.
