Halo Infinite was the moment I knew Xbox was gone. The core game engine was the best Halo has ever felt, but everything around it reeked of incompetent management.

Giving a player a reward for putting in effort is one of the fundamental principles of game design. If you remove all the rewards, what incentive do they have to play?

Their response to player backlash which was essentially “deny, defer, gaslight and ignore” killed the online community for it within a couple of months, and I think they dropped what little content support it had within two years as well, after initially marketing it as a long-term “live service game”.

Blatant incompetence, how Microsoft ever let itself get in this state I’ll never understand.

Also I can’t even remember the campaign story. Was there an angel or something? It was a cliffhanger about some new enemy, as if they’ll ever make another game?

I just remembered the monstrosity that is the Halo TV series as well now, ah god… it’s been a rough decade.