Why are indoor maps so slow? All the particle effects, bump-mapping and specular sheen are actually increased in frequency when you are in a confined space.

The thing we didn't anticipate is that players would use the timedemo feature to report what kind of frame rate they were getting in the game.

Incorrect performance optimization settings: Many users attempt to manually enable features using their video card drivers - features such as full screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

Expectations set by misunderstood hardware: Nearly all of the feedback we're getting concerning performance issues is coming from people who are using video cards that technically offer DirectX 9 support but don't handle DX9's advanced features as well.

Expectations set by older games: Halo renders pixel shaders and is the first Triple A first-person shooter to make widespread use of pixel shader programs. Previous games have used texture mapped polygons and occasional vertex shaded effects.

Pack mentality: We found many users in our forums being quite vocal about the game's alleged performance issues before the game was released.

Randy Pitchford: We didn't anticipate the differences in expectations. This is probably because we're very educated about what the hardware is capable of...This was a mistake on our part that we're moving to correct.

What i liked from the interview was this:

while the timedemo numbers are precise - they aren't very accurate.

1. Expectations set by older games: Halo renders pixel shaders and is the first Triple A first-person shooter to make widespread use of pixel shader programs. Previous games have used texture mapped polygons and occasional vertex shaded effects. The result is that Halo is simply doing several times more calculations per pixel than most competitive titles are doing per vertex or per surface. Halo - being the first to use pixel shader programs as extensively as it has - must bear the burden of setting new expectations.