Is it fair to believe Halo Infinite has had reduced crunch development?

I think there isn’t much more to say about it.

I agree that Bungie packed a bunch of it stuff in for launch…they also had troubled game development as I stated earlier and were crunching as well (especially Halo 2). We can’t have it all where we don’t want developers to crunch, release with everything we want, and have the business not reach its business goals which is clear. No matter what “we” say, a business is still a business and Microsoft wants to launch with Halo Infinite because that will lead to a huge number of players going to their system and playing that game (especially with F2P multiplayer). I’m not defending Microsoft, just saying that what we want isn’t always going to be what we get. I’ll personally judge the package once it releases.

no triple A game is w/o crunch. as far as we know development has been troubled and they need to hit the mark on XSX launch.

iirc only AAA studios that have no crunch are Bungie and Insomniac.

I’m right there with you and won’t really judge the game until it’s out. I would just hope they were being genuine when they said they were willing to delay Halo if it wasn’t ready at launch. That’s the main reason why I’m pushing for a delay, because they said they were open to the idea. They have made so much awesome progress in building confidence in their 1st party organization. I’d hate for that effort, and the Halo brand, to be damaged because they decided to release an unfinished game. I hope they realize that when they launch a GaaS game, they really should not fall for the same problems we’ve seen plague so many other GaaS games to give the term a bad name. Destiny, MCC, NMS, Halo 5, SoT, Driveclub, SoD2, Anthem, and so many more have stumbled out the gate either from lacking content, lacking polish, or all of the above. I’d hate for Halo Infinite to be added to that list.

Agreed 100%