Halo Dev Apologizes for Master Chief Collection’s Free Download

Halo Dev Apologizes for Master Chief Collection’s

Following 343 Industries’ announcement that cropped up later on last week, regarding the rather large 20Gb day-one update for the upcoming Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the studio’s development director, Frank O’Connor, took to NeoGAF to apologize for the update, acknowledging that the extra download will be annoying and inconvenient for some players.

For those of you who don’t know, 343 Industries’ studio head, Dan Ayoub, revealed that Halo: The Master Chief Collection would just about fit on a 45Gb Blu-ray disc, and would receiveda 20Gb day-one update that’ll add additional stuff to the game, such as some features and mostly multiplayer related content.

Responding to scrutiny that was aimed at the studio thereafter, O’Connor explained that 343 Industries wanted for users to have a seamless experience without having to swap out discs mid-game, suggesting that the bulk of Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s multiplayer content was moved to a digital update so that the game’s campaign could be played in its entirety on one disc.

“The game is designed to run as a single, unified product, digital is seamless obviously, but we also wanted disc users to have the same experience, without swapping discs. Since the bulk of it is MP or MP related, the logic is sound. There will ALSO be a TU in there, but that in itself is a tiny fraction of the content,” O’Connor said in a post on NeoGAF.

“Do I understand the inconvenience and annoyance for some users? Of course. I’m not going to blow smoke or ignore it. For some folks it will be straight up annoying and I both apologize unreservedly for the irritance, and hope that the package and the way it works more than makes up for it,” he then apologized, after explaining the justification behind the 20Gb update.

It seems the 20Gb day-one update for a chunk of mostly mostly multiplayer content was a compromise 343 Industries made to try and balance a smooth user experience, even if it wasn’t ideal for everyone.

You can read both of Frank O’Connor’s NeoGAF posts here and here respectively. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is slated to launch worldwide on Tuesday, November 11, exclusively for Xbox One. We’ll bring you more news on the game should further information reach our ears.