Ask Paul: October 11 (Premium)

Happy Friday! This is a particularly good set of reader questions in my opinion, so let's dive right in. The weekend isn't going to, um, weekend itself. Or something.
The Halo effect
helix2301 asks:

With this news of Halo this week what do you think future of Halo looks like there been speculation for years they were going to put it in maintenance mode I think this is proof they still have faith in franchise.

I was never worried about Xbox/Microsoft putting the franchise in maintenance mode, but it was clear to me that Halo Infinite was such a bungled mess from the get-go, with that initial preview that was so horrible, the year-long delay for the initial release, and then the months of updates to get it to where they had promised originally. And that in this mess, we had the makings of a disaster. Microsoft's biggest game franchise had hit a brick wall, and while I am sure there are all kinds of reasons, the thing I keep coming to is that 343 was playing it safe, and that what it delivered in Halo Infinite, ultimately, was this thing that was super-respectful of the past, especially the original game (in single player, anyway), and that in doing so, it had in fact disrespected the game and the fans. Because both deserve better. More.

Ignoring the past year for a moment, when I think back on the many ways in which Xbox had evolved as a business in this push towards remaking itself in the image of its corporate parent--in this case, by "meeting gamers wherever they are"--one of the many bright points I would have (and I guess still do) point to is this ongoing support for existing titles instead of always rushing to the next game. That is, there are games both big (Gears of War, Flight Simulator, etc.) and small-ish (Sea of Thieves) where Xbox just kept supporting that community with additional content post-release. And this made sense within a Game Pass-centric world, especially, where you could do that because loyal fans were still paying to play, essentially, and they didn't need to charge extra for that content as is so often the case. It seemed like a good model to me, not that I have any information about how well it works financially or whatever.

And that's what happened with Halo Infinite. Until it stopped, sort of. 343 back in January revealed that it would no longer deliver any more major updates to the game but would instead scale back and provide smaller, shorter event-based updates over time. This isn't exactly how that was presented, of course. And to be fair, it has continued with those smaller updates consistently all year. But it was clear, still is, that the latest Halo title had underperformed on every level and can only be described as a disappointment. That it is the third straight title in the series to disappoint can't have been lost on anyone inside the company or out.

And so there were always going to be changes. And while this switch to the Unreal Engine is just one of them, it's an important one. It...