Halo found alive: Developer rebrands, multiple games in the works

Xbox has announced sweeping changes to how Halo games are made. 343 Industries, the developer of Halo games since 2007, has rebranded as Halo Studios, with a new internal organization and a new development philosophy. As previously reported, 343’s in-house game engine Slipspace is being abandoned in favor of Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. Halo Studios released video footage of an internal test project called Foundry, which shows how various elements of the Halo universe — including Master Chief, and several iconic locales — will look in Unreal.

Finally, Xbox confirmed that “multiple” new games are in development, all being built in Unreal 5. But these projects are in the early stages; the Xbox Wire blog cautioned that “a new Halo game isn’t imminent.”

Halo Studios revealed its new direction in a video titled “A New Dawn,” which was shown before the final match at the 2024 Halo World Championship on Sunday. The video features talking heads from Halo Studios explaining Foundry, the engine change, and the reorganization, and it offers as a glimpse of what the future of Halo games will look like via footage of Foundry.

The Foundry test footage released shows three scenes: a classic Halo vista set on wooded mountain slopes, a moodily lit scene of snow and ice, and a gross alien world that has been completely overrun by the organic pestilence of the Flood. Master Chief and a Covenant Elite are shown wielding their iconic weapons, and a Banshee vehicle is also depicted. “The original Halo franchise was a graphics showcase, it was best in class,” lead FX artist Daniel Henley said in the video. “That’s what Halo was when it was first released, and that’s what Halo needs to be again.”

Halo Studios clarified that Foundry is not a game, but that it is built as a realistic working target for the visuals of the next generation of Halo games. Indeed, some assets built for Foundry may well make their way into future releases: “The majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects,” studio head Pierre Hintze told Xbox Wire.

There was no indication given of what those multiple future games might be, or when we might expect them. In the here and now, Halo Studios will continue to support Halo Infinite with new content and esports seasons. (A new third-person mode for Halo Infinite was also announced at the Halo World Championship.) But the studio made it clear that the aim of its internal reorganization and the shift away from maintaining its own engine was to become a multi-project team that can release new games and game updates much more quickly.

“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” Hintze told Xbox Wire, hinting at reports that Slipspace has been slow to work with and ill-suited to building what was originally intended to be a long-lived live-service game. “[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”

No mention was made of Halo Studios partnering with other developers to make these multiple Halo games, although it was reported in early 2023 that 343 Industries was working with external studio Certain Affinity on a battle royale Halo game.

Halo Studios says it is now hiring to staff up on those projects. In January 2023, 343 Industries was reportedly “hit hard” by a round of layoffs, which prompted a wave of recrimination from former developers upset at what they saw as mismanagement of the studio. At the time, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that the studio was “all but starting from scratch.” It seems like Sunday’s announcement is the eventual public reveal of that internal reboot.