There was a time when Halo was one of the most important gaming franchises in the world. Sadly, those days have long since passed. In the days of the original Xbox and Xbox 360, the next entries in the FPS franchise weren’t just hyped, they were basically events. When the third entry came out, everyone wanted to be there to “finish the fight,” and the tale of Master Chief helped elevate Microsoft’s gaming platform to new levels thanks to the quality Bungie put into it. However, with the departure of Bungie and the arrival of 343 Industries, things have gone downhill fast, and a new report claims it’s not course-correcting anytime soon.
This report comes from Twitter via “Bathrobe Spartan,” which is a heck of a name. They note in a thread that things in the Halo space are more dire than you might think and that we’re not going to hear anything from 343 Industries or Xbox about the franchise for quite some time.
The first reason for this is the literal state of 343 Industries. They’ve been “thinned out” heavily since the drop of their last title, and it’s not all because of natural “phases” that the game development process has. The thread notes that not only did people depart naturally, but that many people were later laid off. Of the 300 people still left on staff, many of them are there for the business side of game development, not actual game development.
Then, there’s the issues with contractors. 343 Industries is still dedicated to hiring contractors over long-time employees, even though that makes things more difficult in the long run, as Halo Infinite showed many times over. Furthermore, the thread noted how their last title didn’t meet commercial goals, and that says quite a bit, especially since they will apparently STILL be focusing on having contracted work versus trying to build a team to last for years.
As for what the franchise will look like in the future, the report states that there are two games in the works, currently. One is more of a multiplayer PVP-type game, and the other is the next mainline entry in the series. The problem? Well, both of those games are in the pre-production stages of development, which means, at best, we likely won’t hear about them for a few years.
This will be a big blow to fans of Master Chief, and it’ll be interesting to see if anything can help elevate his standing in the future.