Xbox users may have to wait for the Halo: Master Chief Collection and the Halo: Reach some more.
Apparently, the developer hit a snag after adding the Unreal Engine 4, along with an overhauled progression system. According to the report, the additions are maxing out the memory for the Xbox consoles.
Michael Fahrny, the MCC senior producer, admitted as much as he called the problem they’ve been trying to address as “unique.” He said it’s quite a challenge to run the game within the memory constraints of the console.
He said their developers have been hacking at the problem for the MCC for a long time now. The developers are “making good progress,” but there has been no breakthrough yet. He said they have yet to find a magic bullet to solve the problem, so they are resorting to trial and error.
The developers, he explained, are trying to experiment with different approaches to see what works. They will continue to iterate until the Master Chief Collection will work as originally intended.
For the limited memory on the console, he told Tweaktown that they have to revisit each of the game on the console. They need to find out if all the memory constraints are still aligned with the final design.
Admittedly, while they are making good progress, the memory situation for Xbox is “dire.” That’s the bad news. The good news is that it doesn’t suffer as much glitch compared to the UI framework. The problem is they are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Some of the content is simply not natively designed into the game, so they need a lot of tweaking to make it work.
They have devoted an entire team as testers. Their only job is to run a pulse to get an idea of the total bug count, the issues that are causing these glitches, etc. While the bug count is not as many compared to the UI framework, each bug is complex. While he admitted that the challenge appears insurmountable, they are moving in the right direction.
That probably means that the Master Chief Collection probably won’t arrive on the Xbox this year. It also means the release of Halo: Reach will be pushed back even if they are gearing to test the PvP on Reach. But then again, the developer has not given any estimated time for the testing flight.
Watch out for more news on the MCC and Halo: Reach, which will be posted when they come along.
