![]() As soon as you saw it, a delay to the game seemed inevitable, but somehow it was being presented to the public as the centerpiece of a Xbox’s yearly summer showcase, with a 2020 date still attached. This demo was perhaps the first sign that Halo, as an enterprise, was in real trouble. ![]() Microsoft blamed the delay on the COVID-19 pandemic, but it only took the decision to push it back after a disastrous demo of the game in the summer of 2020 was widely derided for its quality. But the game had missed its target to launch alongside the Xbox Series consoles by a whole year. The third mainline Halo game from 343, Infinite was released in late 2021 to a reasonably warm reception: It had transposed Halo’s trademark first-person shooter gameplay to an open-world setting without losing too much of what made it special, while the multiplayer mode, released separately as a stand-alone, free-to-play game, initially seemed to hit the mark. Polygon has also heard from multiple sources about the shift to Unreal Engine 5, and the Certain Affinity game.īehind all this is the story of Halo Infinite. No new story content for Halo Infinite is being worked on, Bloomberg reported, while unreleased multiplayer modes languish with tech troubles, and external studio Certain Affinity works on a possible battle royale-style spinoff. 343 will move from using its own Slipspace Engine - a point of pride for a developer that had always put its tech credentials to the fore - to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. In late January, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier painted a picture of a studio “ all but starting from scratch.” At least 95 people at the company had lost their jobs in the layoffs, including many key development staff. Both the studio and Xbox chief Phil Spencer had to take the humiliating step of denying a rumor that 343 would no longer be working on Halo games directly, instead farming them out to third-party studios. It then became apparent that Halo franchise head Kiki Wolfkill had left too. It was reported that Joe Staten, a Bungie veteran drafted in to get Infinite back on track, was on his way out following the 2022 departure of several other leads, including studio head Bonnie Ross. Recriminations followed, with former staff laying the blame for this - and for the perceived disappointment of Halo Infinite - at the door of “incompetent” leadership. ![]() A round of layoffs at Microsoft in January hit the studio hard. 343 Industries, the internal studio Microsoft created to make Halo games after parting ways with series creator Bungie, is in apparent disarray.
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