Halo developer 343 Industries has lost at least 95 people due to recent Microsoft layoffs, and the studio is apparently switching from its proprietary Slipspace engine to Epic Games’ widely used Unreal Engine for future games, Bloomberg reports.
The future of Halo is somewhat up in the air after the layoffs announced on January 18th. Halo Infinite had a strong launch in late 2021, but as time went on, fans grew annoyed with the frustration of multiplayer progression, the repeated delays of planned features such as a co-op network campaign and Forge (which finally launched in November), and there was no indication that new campaign content was imminent.
The 343 publicly reaffirmed its commitment to the franchise after the layoffs. “Halo and Master Chief are here to stay,” studio head Pierre Hinze, who took over the role in September, said in a statement tweeted by Halo’s account on January 21. “343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and into the future, including epic stories, multiplayer and much more of what makes Halo great.” And Matt Booty, who heads Xbox Game Studios, said in an interview with Bloomberg that “343 will continued to be an in-house developer for Halo and as the home of Halo.”
But it’s unclear when we might see the next game in the series, so it’s hard to know exactly what 343’s involvement in the future franchise will be. For example, the studio is already working with Austin-based Certain Affinity on a battle royale game codenamed Tatanka, but that game “could go in different directions,” Bloomberg reports.
Tatanka will also apparently be developed on the Unreal Engine, while future Halo games “will also explore the use” of Unreal, Bloomberg says. If true, the change marks another major game developer switching to Unreal; Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt Red announced a “multi-year strategic partnership” with Epic Games to use Unreal in March, and in November Epic said more than half of all announced next-gen games were made on the Unreal Engine.
343 also apparently didn’t do any new story content for Halo Infinite, which seems surprising for a game once billed as “the beginning of the next ten years for Halo” and titled, well, Infinite. Instead, developers were “prototyping in Unreal Engine and pitching ideas for new Halo games,” Bloomberg says. I personally was disappointed to read this as I really enjoyed Infinite’s campaign and was hoping for more.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment on the Bloomberg report. Epic declined to comment.
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