Halo Tournament Canceled For An Embarrassing Reason
Just when you think 343 Industries’ mishandling of Halo: The Master Chief Collection couldn’t get any worse, their latest misstep comes in a very public fashion. Over the weekend, Microsoft held a tournament as part of the ongoing Halo Championship Series, with HCS Cup #1 play being held openly and online. Unfortunately, due to a recent April patch that focused on online matchmaking penalties, adding a ranking system and, ironically, stability, it has become a lot harder to get into online multiplayer matches. Due to a lot of protests from players about their connections, the Halo tournament was officially scrapped. Nobody wins!
We're aware of and investigating party joinability issues. As a result, we'll be canceling HCS Cup #1, and apologize for the inconvenience.
— Halo (@Halo) April 26, 2015
It has been about 167 days since Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched, and the fact that online play is such an issue that Microsoft and 343 Industries can’t even hold a tournament online because of connectivity problems is an absolute embarrassment. Remember, the Halo Championship Series was supposed to kick off in November last year, and end in March this year. It was supposed to show continued interest in Halo becoming a prevalent force on the eSports scene in the lead up to Halo 5: Guardians.
This is just one of several cancelations 343 Industries has had to endure in the ongoing repairs of their broken Halo: MCC launch. Group beta tests for patches was scrapped in order to get patches out the door quicker, which led to an early March “fix” for the length of time it took to connect to online matches. The promise of Halo 3: ODST as a bonus, free campaign download is currently schedule for a May release, although that may be pushed back in order to get the Halo games, you know, reliably playable online.
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With that in mind, one has to wonder just exactly how any of this will impact the future of remastered series’ for Microsoft. We know that a Gears of War remaster is in the works, although it appears only to be the first game. One could conceivably argue that Microsoft saw the headaches that come with organizing multiple franchise entries’ online play into one package and decided against it. I mean, if you’re making a new Gears of War game for the Xbox One, it would make sense to have all the previous entries available for first-time Xbox owners.
Hopefully, 343 Industries does a better job of developing Halo 5: Guardians, as its holiday 2015 release will have a major impact on Microsoft’s ability to market the Xbox One to holiday buyers.
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