Halo Infinite's First Technical Preview Isn't Going as Planned

COG: Just gotta be patient... I guess.

Halo Insiders all over the world geared up this morning for the long-awaited first technical preview of Halo Infinite, only  to be met by long hours of wait, with a crashed Halo Waypoint, and an empty email inbox.

[Jin_Sakai]

Doesn’t surprise me. This is 2021 in a nutshell.

[phoenixwing]

Have to agree if your game has online and it's popular 9/10 you're going to have a rough launch

[OptimusDK]

It has not launched yet. You know that right?

[VenomUK]

I understand the need to call out broken games but this piece is premature. This is a pre-release technical preview specifically for testing and discovering issues and there has naturally been a huge demand in gamers wanting to try it out which has overwhelmed servers. It's this process which can help lead to a smooth launch.

[phoenixwing]

Optimus read between the lines. Im including the build up to launch as well when I say launch. Its self explanatory.

[darthv72]

would this be considered old now as by the time this was approved, they got it working? The initial problems were yesterday, today its better.

[lelo2play]

I suspect Halo Infinite is going to be one big f**k up by 343 Industries.

[COS]

So true because every Alpha & beta test goes 100% perfect w/o bugs. Fantastic insight

[Gamble20]

You would suspect wrong then. First day had hiccups, but it’s working fine (by preview testing standards) today and the game feels fantastic.

[iplay1up2]

Looking at your comments, no surprise here.

[itsmebryan]

@lelo
Have you played it?

[ElvisHuxley]

That's probably a bit much, but yeah, I don't really have the confidence in quality that you expect to have with many first party studios, particularly ones that make your flagship IP. But who knows, I'm sure the devs are working hard to salvage their reputation after the reception they got a year ago. I'm no Xbox fan, but I think gamers seem to be getting increasingly unforgiving when it comes to game developers, which will only discourage innovation.

[CaptainHenry916]

They better delay it again before it's too late

[Lightning77]

Due to high volume of people cramming in all at once. They better get it together well before launch of the game.

[TheDoomedGuy]

They could always do it in waves instead.

[Eonjay]

I think they should do regions and start them really early in the morning like 2:30 AM.

[masterfox]

High volume? , more like cheap connectivity infraestructure imo.

[kayoss]

wait, theyre not utilizing the power of the cloud to handle all that data and info that is pouring in?

[Darkborn]

But I thought Microsoft had the best servers ever made. Lol in all seriousness, launch days of almost any online game is a bad day. I've been there for hundreds of them, and I don't think any of them went well.

[CorndogBurglar]

Remember Battlefield 4? Lol

[slate91]

Man battlefield 4, combines with all of the launch xbox one online bugs. Dark days. Followed by next years MCC launch LOL. Hated the start of last gen.

[NeoGamer232]

Ya, this is news because it is happening, but is anyone really surprised?

They test a lot trying to simulate the load, then the real load is tested and reality takes control.

This is why they do these pre-tests. So, that this is not a real Day One launch issue.

[KillBill]

Good enough for PlayStation to use their Azure.

[Darkborn]

Well the only reason I made a jab at Microsoft is because Xbox fans and Phil Spencer always says their servers are the best and unstoppable and the power of the cloud is too much to comprehend and all that. But they balk when 100k players login? I'm pretty sure multiple games right now deal with more server load as we speak. It's almost like their selling ps5's on the Microsoft servers.

[itsmebryan]

@dark
Flight simulator is proof the cloud works. That's why they are testing now. Much better than releasing a broken game.

[NeoGamer232]

How do you even know it is an Azure issue?

There are a lot of games already on Azure working just fine. Usually this is about code. Fix the code and it will perform just fine.

[Tedakin]

It isn't launch day. It's a technical test 4 months before launch.

[Profchaos]

From a tech perspective yeah azure is incredible as someone who works in that environment it's a industry leading tech but doesn't garuntee it's perfect.

This is more an issue with failing to scale the solution correctly

[Manubiggs]

This is a stress test - its not launch day ...now, if they fail on launch day after these tests ...that is a different story

[Wikkid666]

No, this isn't a stress test.

[darthv72]

stress test may not be the right term, but it still works. not only is this technical preview about testing the online game play for bugs, but it also stresses the server load balancing for matchmaking.

[SPEAKxTHExTRUTH]

Never understood why people get mad at BETA test having issues.

[Gamble20]

They’ve been quite clear it isn’t even a beta. (Semantics to some degree though) It’s a technical preview. They’re fully aware the build in its current state is broken. People have bad expectations.

[CobraKai]

I dunno if a technical preview is even a good idea to begin with. Gamers today are chomping at the bit to scrutinize every last detail of any game, but especially big releases. They’ll overlook the fact that it’s a preview or a beta, and take it as this is exactly what to expect. Like lambs to the slaughter.

[chronoforce]

"It's only a Beta" Lol.

[13sentinel]

Next: "It's only launch, they'll fix it"

[aconnellan]

What’s the point of this comment?

343 released a technical test to test the server load.

The server strained under the load of all the players logging in and trying to play.

They sorted it out and performance has been smoother.

Is that not literally the point of this whole exercise? To test what they’ve built with real players to make sure it works?

[Tedakin]

I know. It's the entire point. They said before it released there'd be issues. It's a tech test 4 months before launch.

[Redemption-64]

Am sure they will work things out. Plus if they are having problems now that is good, so they can fix things before the game comes out

[DaMist]

Yeah I've tried all day long yesterday to log into halowaypoint with no success and when I did, empty mailbox lol here's hoping they get it sorted.

[nickanasty206]

Worked for me this morning without issue. Last night was a shitfest.

[S2Killinit]

Again? I thought they said everything was fine now.

[Gamble20]

As of today, it is up and running. First day had issues.

[darthv72]

It is fine. This piece is over a day old.

[Automatic79]

It's a technical preview. Why are these headlines getting approved? Epic fail on behalf of N4G.

[Vegamyster]

You know why lol.

[ArthriticPowers]

I just played for the last 2hrs for the first time. No issues so far. Weapons feel precise and have real hit to them. So keen to see how the vehicles feel. This could be something very, very good. Halo gameplay just feels like is it's own thing in the saturated FPS space. Here's hoping because gaming and the FPS genre in particular are in a far better state when Halo's part of the conversation.
.

[starsi360]

Well to some extent this is what technical previews and betas are about. Fixing problems and getting the game into a fit state to launch. It’s day one, I’m sure it will smooth out as the days pass and the devs work on the issues that crop up

[Father__Merrin]

Was this an open test or closed

[nickanasty206]

Glad they didn't release this last year with the console. Couldn't even download the insider build until this morning. Game is good though from what I have played so far. This being free to play is going to be huge for Halo.

[Npugz7]

Doesn’t look good in my opinion! Looks very very last gen!

[iammason]

this guy watched xbox one gameplay and didnt even know

[Orchard]

And this is why you run technical previews/beta tests.

I've been trying it on XB1 and it actually looks pretty decent, perf is OK - huge improvement over what we saw last year and that wasn't even on the weaker XB1...

[iammason]

I had all these problems last night. This morning it was flawless booting up, and only had minor desync problems in game.

[franwex]

I guess that’s the whole point of a technical preview.

[pedrof93]

The game is awesome 😆 Yes it was hard to get into the preview, I had to read a few articles online, to fix a few acess bugs. But it was worth it 😅

[masterfox]

And this is the 500 million dlls budget game?, sad they couldnt afford a proper network infrastructure , probably cost like a billion dlls to have a proper one hmmm :D

[Tedakin]

It works fine now. It was day one of a tech test 4 months before the actual launch... :D

[darthv72]

Fox doesnt care. He just likes to talk crap.

[Bathyj]

It's visually very unimpressive to me but it looks like it plays like halo so if that's what you like then I'm sure it will be fine.

[Sayai jin]

That's what these closed betas are for. Identify, isolate, and fix.

[TheHan]

Those who want to see Halo fail are the same people who bitch about a beta.

[Profchaos]

Yeah it's a beta sometimes they break and it's ok it's expected you haven't paid anything yet and it's designed to help them find issues prior to launch.

People need to stop treating betas like demos

[Ratchet75]

Just be patient people.
Halo infinite is a game that we re going to play for the whole generation and beyond.
So even if it launch with few glitches, remember it's day one on gamepass and will stay there forever. 😁

[isarai]

What i find funny is they were gonna ship this if people didn't complain about craig like they did. Hopefully they nail it, not even a huge halo fan but i'd like to see it return to the glory of Halo 1-3 days

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Well I'm not surprised since this a pre tech test to know.what the limit of something is.

[bneals]

The fact that this negative story is the "hottest" and almost only story featured about the XSX is a perfect example of why N4G sucks.

First of all, this is a technical preview. It isn't meant to be perfect.

Second, many of us, me included, have played dozens of matches yesterday. I had a blast and played long enough for a second map to be added to the preview.

The problem with this site is that negativity towards the other console always beats out good news. There are MS and Sony trolls, but the latter won today by making Halo's preview look bad. But the funny thing is, while these trolls were typing negative comments in the forums of n4g about a console and game they will likely never play, I was actually playing a game and loving it.

Grow up people.

[Notellin]

Boo hoo. A technical preview struggled for about 6 hours before allowing everyone in to play.

These useless hit pieces always make it to the hottest stories on this fanboy website.

[DJStotty]

lol @ people trying to paint this as a game launch day.

It is a technical test, which will include stress testing servers, which you basically try to break your own servers, in order to be able to improve stability for launch day.

"A stress test is a test designed to increase the number of simultaneous requests on a system past a point where performance is degraded, possibly even to the point of complete failure."