There is a disturbing new story going around about 343 Studios and Halo Infinite, which may not have been completely confirmed, but lines up very well with what we know so far.
We had reported this week on the layoffs ongoing at Microsoft, and that Halo Infinite developer 343 Studios was targeted by those layoffs in particular. Many key people in the studio had left over the last year, including Bonnie Ross, who was 343 Studios’ founder.
An insider source claims that Halo Infinite missed its overall goals, including sales numbers, and as a result the studio has been converted into ‘franchise coordinators’.
What this means is Halo Infinite will no longer have new story campaigns, and work will focus on multiplayer. While 343 Studios is largely in charge of this work, most of it has already been outsourced to support studios.
Microsoft is also open to continue work on Halo games, but no longer any major Halo projects. Instead, these are expected to be spinoffs in new genres or potentially sequels to Halo Infinite, to be made by external studios. 343 Studios’ role will be like LucasArts for the Star Wars IP, coordinating so that these stories are consistent with what has already been told in the franchise before. Microsoft was apparently already shopping around for games like these since 2020, and these were deliberately planned to have smaller budgets and costs.
Slipspace Engine continues to be in use as the engine for Halo Infinite, and Microsoft in fact will allow other game companies to study and use it to make some of those other new Halo games.
Our source also gave us a small peek on what was rumored to be the turbulent development period for Halo Infinite. Joseph Staten was leading a small team working on multiple smaller scale, and self contained campaign DLC for Halo Infinite, planned to keep the game relevant for a few months, and possibly years. All of these plans were dropped as Microsoft decided to cut their losses and ramp down its development. All this happened while Bonnie Ross was still in the studio. Staten had recently decided to leave 343 Studios, but will be moving within Microsoft to Xbox Publishing instead.
These details line up as an explanation for why several key employees at higher positions in 343 Studios left the company last year, in the span of a few months. Halo Infinite itself released all the way back in November 15, 2021, so this was not a hasty decision on the side of Microsoft.
To add to that, this also explains why 343 Studios was particularly targeted by the recent round of layoffs. We don’t know what rationale was there for layoffs at The Coalition and Bethesda Game Studios, but it may be that these are related to plans for other games that they have decided to cancel as well.
Source: Twitter
