It’s all going a bit pear-shaped over at the Halo headquarters this week, as it looks like another key member of Halo’s leadership team is set to part ways. David Berger has led the technical development at 343 Industries since Halo 4 – which was all the way back in 2012 – and the rumors are that he will be leaving the company.
It seems that the old saying “when it rains, it pours” certainly fits the bill here because this news comes after another departure earlier in the week. One of the directors of 343 Industries, Bonnie Ross, decided to leave Microsoft after 27 years, with 15 of those years being spent guiding the Halo series with her torch of creativity.
The Halo series is probably the most recognizable, and it’s definitely the most iconic Xbox game in a long list of legendary games, but in more recent times it has struggled to compete with rival IPs, becoming far less relevant along the way. Halo Infinite is the latest game in the series, and although it received fairly positive reviews, the problems came due to the lengthy development of its live service, and it has since struggled when battling other online shooters such as Warzone or Fortnite.
The departure of Bonnie Ross came as a shock when she decided to leave Halo’s leadership team so she could attend to family matters at home. What it does mean for 343 is a whole lot of restructuring, something that has become even more apparent due to the potential loss of another important staff member in David Berger. This is nothing new though because the loss of staff members has become a regular occurrence for 343 in recent years because various staff members have left the team too, such as the previous studio lead, Chris Lee.
Microsoft has decided to move quickly to try and strengthen the studio by adding ex-Bungie employee Joseph Staten and having him operate as the new creative director of the Halo franchise. The creation of a new team of boffins to steer the Halo franchise back into the competing eye began earlier in the summer when veteran Halo team member Paul Bertone re-joined the franchise as the game’s technical design director. However, the role that Bonnie Ross left behind was too big a job for one person to fill, and so it was split into three separate roles, with Elizabeth Van Wyck leading the business and operations side of things, Pierre Hintze taking on leadership of the studio, and Bryan Koski was brought in to oversee the franchise.
The report about the imminent departure of David Berger was uncovered by ‘Lords of Gaming’ but the reports seem to be very accurate. On the outside, this would seem like a huge loss to the studio, with Berger having a creative hand in classic titles like Mechwarrior and Shadowrun, but as they say in business: the show must go on.
