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Just read this over at HaloGaf:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39474201&postcount=18799
@FyreWulff wrote:

The fact that Anniversary would have been 60$ with two discs is already public knowledge, same with the reason why H1A didn’t have the H1 Gametype on the disc (because of no space left)

It’s been acknowledged that 343 knows how many people are affected. 343 has then made a decision on it. 343 can now own the decision, and people are well within their right to gripe about it. I’m going to bitch about it because 343’s ACTIONS, which rarely sync up with 343’s words, have negatively affected me re: LAN already. As someone who helps an Enforcer run a Halo freeplay at PAX, Halo 2 and Halo 3 were GREAT because we had easy access to the maps and the title updates. For Halo 3, all we had to do was put an HDD on the host box if we wanted the Halo 3 1.1 changes.

Now we’re left in situation for PAX Prime 2012 where we now have to decide which Reach we’re going to have. HDDs are hard to get in so we might just be forced to roll with 1.0. Our options with 1.1 are to either get hard drives in for every box (pain in the ass, and still no DLC) or use Anniversary discs, and going with Anniversary discs means only Anniversary maps. With Halo 3: Mythic, we could use 4 Core 360s with the disc and we had all DLC and the title update. It was glorious.

My opinion is the decision to bring Anniversary to market at a lower price was made at the cost of an already existing game’s player base. If you’re so pressed for space, the decision should have been made to not even include Halo: Reach Multiplayer on the disc, and just include the code, because as the Frankie post said, most people playing multiplayer have Gold. Reach would have been WAY better off if this decision had been made. We wouldn’t have had the silly redundant playlists, and we’d actually be able to have Forge World remakes of non-Anni maps in Team Classic along with the Anni maps.

We hear “Halo 4 will have streamlined multiplayer”, then 343 shovels as many playlists as they can onto Reach. We hear “Default Reach will remain Default” and mere months later, Default Reach players were left with a mere two playlists, once of which requires all DLC to even play. I see 343 choose to negatively impact LAN with their Reach title update, then I’m supposed to give 343 the benefit of the doubt on the non-Gold community going forward?

I’ll admit right now I used some harsh words, and I apologize for that right now (I should have said “it feels like 343 doesn’t care” instead of “343 doesn’t give a shit” for example), since it’s probably not a good idea to engage in a lively conversation while under the stress of moving countries. My base criticisms remain though. I am aware of the benefits that this decision has. I’m not yet convinced of the trade off that it incurs.
@David Ellis aka lybertyboy wrote:

I’ll gladly own the decisions we made regarding Halo: Anniversary because, while not perfect, they provided the best experience for the widest audience. I’ve always appreciated your passion for legacy items in Halo, because they’re very personal to your enjoyment of the Halo experience. Please understand that we don’t have the luxury to focus on personal opinions all the time because sometimes tough calls are for the greater good. When we made the call to do a title update for Reach, our number one pillar was “DON’T BREAK HALO: REACH.” The method we used for the title update was seen as the best solution to this very complex task. We didn’t set out to break interoperability for LAN with the title update but the constraints of time and resources made supporting that feature from a test perspective impossible. And remember our core pillar was “DON’T BREAK HALO: REACH.” I’m not going to bother digging into the “default Reach” stuff much, but I will say this. The quote that you so love to bring up about our so-called promise was in reference to changing the game to zero bloom, so using that as some umbrella statement is disingenuous at best.

I absolutely agree with you that Halo: Reach has too many playlists, and this is something we will be addressing. Additionally, we’ve learned a lot from our successes and failures regarding playlist management for Reach. I know Frank has said this before, but we’re planning to have a much more streamlined hopper experience for War Games when we launch Halo 4.

We’re not perfect. We’re human beings. We’ve made mistakes in the past and will certainly make them in the future. I won’t ask you to trust us, but I speak for myself and and everyone else at 343 when I say that we absolutely care about Halo and its fans. We will always try to make decisions that benefit the widest number of players. Sometimes that will cause us to step on individual toes. That is unfortunate, but it is also reality.