If you've tried to get a game of Halo via The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One, then you'll be acutely aware that 343i and Microsoft have somewhat dropped the ball with regards to online matchmaking, with looooooong loading times and low session success rates.
Last week's patch hasn't done much to ease the issues either, with 343i's Bonnie Ross admitting the obvious: "we have encountered unexpected issues that were not apparent in our internal test environment and that have resulted in a frustrating experience."
Ross, in an apologetic mood, offered her "heartfelt apologies for the delay and for the negative aspects of your experience to date", as well as assuring us that the team are working "around the clock" to resolve the issues that have plagued the launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection thus far.
"Within 343 Industries and Xbox, I can assure you that resolving these issues is our #1 priority," Ross said. "We continue to partner with the Xbox platform team to analyze all data to make ongoing server-side adjustments to continually improve the matchmaking experience. We are also preparing additional content updates that will address existing campaign, UI, and other issues to improve the overall experience. With each update we will carefully analyze data to confirm that the improvements we're seeing internally are also happening with fans at home."
"Know that we're trying to be as nimble as possible to put fixes in place. We are planning multiple server-side tweaks and game content updates over the coming weeks. Looking forward, I want to give you a high-level cadence of the latest updates we're currently working on. Development and testing of our latest content update continues and we are on track for release later this week. We will update you on the status and patch notes of the content update once we have a better understanding of our release window. Only through making changes on both the "server side" (matchmaking and other server rulesets) and, via content updates (to the game itself), can we make the significant progress we're working towards. And in the interest of expediency, we're attacking the problem from both sides, non-stop."
Once the problems have been fixed Ross has also promised that they'll turn their attention to taking care of those that have been affected: "we will detail how we will make this right with our fans."
Exactly what they'll do to appease disgruntled gamers remains to be seen, but given the severity of the situation and the length of time it's taking to fix, they're going to have to do something fairly significant if they're going to turn around popular opinion. We await more news with interest.