Since the mass layoffs in Halo maker 343 Industries, fans wondered what the future held for the eminent sci-fi shooter. It turns out that Microsoft still has massive plans for Master Chief, and they include a number of upcoming projects as well as the franchise’s transition to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, the technology that powers Fortnite and many other Xbox games.
343 Industries revealed this news in 2024 Halo World Championships, including that the studio will now be called Halo Studios. Instead of continuing to exploit the current Slipspace engine, which was built from scratch Hello Infinitethe franchise will abandon it in favor of Unreal Engine 5. There is also work underway under the name “Project Foundry” to build a foundation for training and best practices in programming Halo with recent technology.
A mini-documentary featuring studio head Pierre Hintze, COO Elizabeth van Wyck and studio art director Chris Matthews outlined the company’s vision for the future Halo. It turned out that many recent things Halo games are currently in development, and Halo Studios is changing not only its name, but also its studio culture, workflow, and team organization. One of the hopes for the transition to EU 5 is that recruitment will become easier and development streamlined when people don’t have to constantly learn and adapt to an entirely foreign, proprietary engine.
Though Hintze called it a recent chapter for Haloit’s difficult not to see it as a pristine break and a rebuke to the recent past. Hello Infinite went through an extremely demanding development cycle, including the lack of the Xbox Series X/S launch windowand I came out on the other side that it’s good, but not great. Less than two years after launch, the then-company 343 Industries experienced difficulties reported 95 layoffs as a result of wider cuts at Microsoft.
The move to Unreal Engine may not solve some of the deeper problems with this tumultuous production process, but it does suggest that Microsoft is moving to focus much more on internal co-development resources. The coalition that creates Gears of War: E-Dayhas always used Unreal Engine. Several other Xbox game studios have already made this leap as well, including Obsidian (Notorious AND Outer Worlds 2), InXile Entertainment (Mechanical revolutions), Initiative (Perfect darkness) and Compulsory Games (South of north).
Undead Laboratories State of decay 3 it also uses UE5, which is apparently at least part of the reason Obsidian Entertainment helped prepare the open world technology. This is just part of the collaborative development potential that Microsoft showed off earlier this year as part of its massive summer showcase. However, most of the fruits of this effort have yet to be seen in practice. Notorious it was supposed to come out this fall, but was pushed back to February 2025. There are still significant studios at Microsoft that don’t exploit Unreal, including Playground Games, which is making Fairy tale and almost all the teams from the Bethesda acquisition.
As regards Halowe still don’t know when these recent games will be revealed and what they will be. Tom Warren at Edge reported it was a remake not too long ago Halo: Combat has evolved is in progress. For a studio to transition to recent technology, it would certainly make sense to start with a beloved, established entity like the first game and learn from it. Hello InfiniteMeanwhile, the free multiplayer mode continues to get recent updatesalthough with these recent changes it no longer sounds like a platform for the future Halo as it was once called.
