[derekp7]

I previously thought that the middle core on a Falcon Heavy was expendable. So it not landing (while needing 3 engines) makes sense, as it was only a week or two ago that they tried a fast/hard landing with 3 engines over open water (as they weren't sure then that it would work). I would expect this landing mode to need at least a couple more tries to get working reliably.

[Klathmon]

Well that test was unrelated. They only reason they tried that with an ocean landing was because they wanted the barge for the FH demo flight.

This should have been a 1-3-1 style landing burn where it lights up one engine, then 2 more to slow it down, then drops down to just 1 again at the end. In this case it sounds like the the outer 2 engines didn't start up right, so it came in way too hot.

They also have said that the center core of FH is basically a new design from the ground up, so it makes sense that they had some problems on it's first landing.