Six months after the tumultuous release of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and despite 343 Industries’ valiant attempts to put out fires left, right and center, there’s no disguising the fact that the anticipated compilation was a technical mess. It proved to be an embarrassment for both the studio and Microsoft, and now, Frank O’Connor – franchise development director of the sci-fi series – has revealed in an interview with Xbox Achievements that the debacle that surrounded MCC is “definitely a black eye” for both parties.
Ultimately, it’s a mistake that O’Connor and Co. want to learn from leading into this year’s release of Halo 5: Guardians, and the director assured fans that the problems that befell Halo: The Master Chief Collection won’t have the same impact on the sequel when it debuts in October.
“Halo: The Master Chief Collection is definitely a black eye for us,” he began. “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.”
Further in the interview, the Halo dev spoke openly about the myriad of issues that plagued MCC from day-one, and from what we understand, the vast majority of technical problems that raised their head weren’t detected during the game’s quality assurance and testing.
“Halo 5 is being made by a completely different team. It’s a singular product. It was built from the ground up for this new technology, rather than being sort of dragged kicking and screaming from 2001 and forced and shoehorned into a 2014 console. So the problem spaces are still very challenging but they’re radically different. I think the beta is already a decent first step, in a retail environment, showing that we don’t have the same problems.”
Halo 5: Guardians will release exclusively for Xbox One on October 27, 2015.