It would likely be an understatement to say that Halo Infinite had a tumultuous development history. First revealed at E3 in 2018, players had to wait two more years before receiving a first look at gameplay. Unfortunately for gamers, that original gameplay reveal went down in infamy.
Unveiled during the Xbox Games Showcase in the summer of 2020, players received a first glimpse at the Master Chief and the world Zeta Halo during a roughly 8-minute campaign demo. Despite showing impressive gunplay against the new Banished enemies, the demo received a lot of negative feedback from the Halo community, specifically surrounding the graphics. As a result of this underwhelming reveal, the developer made the difficult decision to delay Halo Infinite until 2021. Recently, the head of Xbox made some admissions regarding the reveal of the title.
During a recent interview with British GQ, Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, gave his thoughts about the 2020 gameplay reveal of Halo Infinite. According to Spencer, the development team attempted to reach an unrealistic deadline by revealing the campaign and planning to release it only a couple of months later. “We should have been honest with ourselves,” he said. Looking back on the process, he admitted that the original reveal of the game was unsatisfactory.
However, Spencer emphasized that the intentions of 343 Industries and Xbox were not to deceive fans by revealing the game during the 2020 event only to delay it shortly after. Instead, he said that the gameplay of Halo Infinite was unveiled out of a “hope” that it could be finished by the end of the year to coincide with the launch of the next-gen Xbox Series X and S. The game was meant to be one of the main selling points of the new consoles. In retrospect, Spencer realized that this was not the right course of action. “I don't think hope is a great development strategy,” he said.
Fortunately for fans, it appears that the year delay was for the best. Following the 2020 delay of the game, 343 Industries has managed to add another layer of polish to the campaign. In addition, pushing back the release date until 2021 gave players several opportunities to test out the multiplayer component. Even Craig, the source of an infamous Halo Infinite meme, received a facelift in the interim.
These comments from Spencer come as Xbox has surprise launched the multiplayer of Halo Infinite. Players can now jump into online matches and see for themselves whether the delay of the game was worthwhile. In addition to the unexpected release of the multiplayer, the campaign is set to arrive in just a few weeks.
Halo Infinite releases on December 8 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The multiplayer is available now.