343 says Halo Infinite has become a "consistent" live service title, but still needs more "quality"

343 Industries has suggested that delivering a "cadence of content" was the biggest challenge Halo Infinite faced during its first year on shelves.

In an interview shared on the Xbox Wire blog (spotted by Eurogamer), the studio's head of live service, Sean Baron, said the team has finally gotten into the habit of dropping content on-time, which represents a notable win as the franchise attempts to establish itself as a functioning live-service title.

"Season 4 is very exciting for me because it’ll mark the third straight on-time release for the Halo Infinite Live Service team,” said Baron. "You know the saying—'Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern.' I think that’s where we are now—we’re seeing the outcome of the focus on consistency. And I couldn’t be more excited for the team getting there.

"We still have plenty of room to improve—we’ll always be working to find new ways of improving and ensuring the predictability of the service. But I’m very happy with the progress we’ve made there and looking forward to making it four in a row with Season 5 later this year."

Halo Infinite players want consistency and quality

Speaking more broadly about the performance of Halo Infinite, Baron said that while consistent updates are crucial to the success of the live service title, so is delivering quality–and it's in that arena where he feels there's still plenty of room to grow.

"Where we need to start showing more noteworthy improvements is with quality. Both technical and experiential quality. My hope is that over the next few releases and updates we’ll start seeing quality make the same types of jumps that we’ve seen with consistency and satisfaction.

Halo Infinite landed in December 2021 after a delay that scuppered its chances of launching alongside the Xbox Series X | S. Its release marked the first time the series had embraced the live-service formula, with the multiplayer portion of the shooter being offered as a free-to-play download.

It also marked the first time a mainline game in the franchise launched without staple features like local co-op and Forge, with 343 eventually scrapping the former to "better address player feedback and quality of life updates."

Despite attracting 20 million players at launch, Microsoft admitted that Halo Infinite "tripped and stumbled" on arrival, but backed 343 to bounce back.