Xbox has announced major changes to the way 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 Slipspace game engine is being abandoned in favor of Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. Halo Studios has released video footage from an internal testing project called Foundry, which shows how various elements of the Halo universe – including Master Chief and several iconic locations – will appear in Unreal.
Finally, Xbox confirmed that there are “several” new games in development, all of which will be built in Unreal 5. But these projects are in the early stages; the Xbox Wire blog warned that “a new Halo game is not imminent.”
Halo Studios revealed its new direction in a video titled “A new dawn”, which was shown on Sunday before the final match of the 2024 Halo World Championship. The video features talking heads from Halo Studios explaining Foundry, the engine change and the reorganization, and offers a glimpse into what the future of Halo games will look like via images from Foundry.
Foundry’s released test footage shows three scenes: a classic Halo vista set on forested mountain slopes, a moodily lit scene of snow and ice, and a gross alien world completely overrun by the organic plague of the Flood. Master Chief and a Covenant Elite are shown with their iconic weapons, and a Banshee vehicle is also depicted. “The original Halo franchise was a graphic showcase, it was the best in its class,” lead FX artist Daniel Henley said in the video. “That was Halo when it was first released, and that’s what Halo needs to be again.”
Halo Studios clarified that Foundry is not a game, but it was built as a realistic working target for the visuals of the next generation of Halo games. Some items built for Foundry may even make their way into future releases: “The majority of what we’ve shown in Foundry is expected to participate in projects we are building, or in future projects,” studio head Pierre Hintze told Xbox Wire.
No indication was given as to what those multiple future games might be, or when we could expect them. In the here and now, Halo Studios will continue to support Halo Infinity with new content and esports seasons. (A new third person mode for Halo Infinity was also announced at the Halo World Championship.) But the studio made it clear that the goal of the internal reorganization and shift from maintaining its own engine was to become a multi-project team that would release many more new games and game updates can release. quickly.
“We had a disproportionate focus on creating the conditions to be successful in service provision Halo InfinityHintze told Xbox Wire, referring to reports that Slipspace is slow to work with and isn’t suitable for building what was originally intended to be a long-lived live service game. “(But by switching to Unreal) we can focus all our attention on creating multiple new experiences with the highest quality possible.”
There was no mention of Halo Studios working with other developers to create these multiple Halo games, although in early 2023 it was reported that 343 Industries was working with third-party studio Certain Affinity on a battle royale Halo game.
Halo Studios says it is now hiring for these projects. In January 2023, 343 Industries was reportedly “hit hard” by a series of layoffs, leading to a wave of accusations from former developers angry at what they saw as mismanagement of the studio. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported at the time that the studio was “almost starting from scratch.” It appears that Sunday’s announcement is the final public unveiling of that internal reboot.