343 Industries Says It Will Continue Development on Halo Games Amidst Microsoft Layoffs

Reports from last week suggested that active development on the Halo franchise was being handed over to a third-party studio.

Written by Rahul Chettiyar, Edited by Manas Mitul | Updated: 23 January 2023 16:53 IST

343 Industries Says It Will Continue Development on Halo Games Amidst Microsoft Layoffs

Photo Credit: 343 Industries

Halo Infinite's promised split-screen co-op feature was cancelled

Highlights

343 Industries, The Coalition, and Bethesda Game Studios suffered layoffs
Several senior staff exited 343 Industries before the layoffs occurred
Former staff blame Microsoft for Halo Infinite’s messy development

Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees last week, citing prevailing economic climate. The job cuts at the tech giant affected the games division as well. Specifically, the developers at The Coalition, Bethesda Game Studios, and 343 Industries — the last of which is responsible for the Halo series. The studio, which has seen a wave of high-level departures in recent times, has now taken to Twitter, to assure fans that it will continue development on Halo “now and in the future.” The development came after reports emerged stating that future work on the beloved franchise was being handed over to a third-party studio, with 343 Industries being moved to a supervisory role.

A report in Metro, which translated renowned leaker Bathrobe Spartan's original tip, also added that initial plans for a Halo Infinite story-based DLC had been cancelled. The aforementioned layoffs further strengthened the speculation that 343 Industries is looking to downsize its work on Halo Infinite and beyond, though the official statement from Studio Head Pierre Hintze paints a different picture. “Halo and Master Chief are here to stay,” it reads. “343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future, including epic stories, multiplayer, and more of what makes Halo great.” The narrative aspect is important to note here since the report also suggested that the “core games” in the Halo franchise “will no longer have story campaigns.”

pic.twitter.com/03Xm3a9s59
— Halo (@Halo) January 21, 2023

Development on Halo Infinite has been shaky, to say the least, owing to several delays and changes in leadership leading up to its launch in December 2021 and beyond. Even disregarding the layoffs, several senior exits, including those of Halo Infinite's multiplayer creative director Tom French and developer Joseph Staten, have severely affected the company. The latter is now rejoining Xbox Game Studios Publishing. News about the layoffs hasn't kept ex-staff silent either, with many criticising Microsoft for Halo Infinite's messy development cycle.

One such vocal individual is Patrick Wren, who served eight years at 343 Industries. “The layoffs at 343 shouldn't have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state. The reason for both of those things is incompetent leadership up top during Halo Infinite development causing massive stress on those working hard to make Halo the best it can be,” he tweeted after news regarding Microsoft's layoffs broke.

While Halo Infinite got off to a strong start, on both campaign and multiplayer fronts, 343 Industries eventually began taking flak for not offering enough content. Up first was the much-awaited split-screen campaign co-op mode, which not only was reduced to network/ online-only but suffered delays, stretching long after beta testing periods. The mode was initially expected to drop in August 2022 but got delayed into November, and was included as part of the game's Winter Update, which added a battle pass into the fold.

From Elden Ring to BGMI's ban, 2022 gave us a lot in the gaming space. We discuss it all on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Halo Infinite

KEY SPECS
NEWS

Genre Shooter

Platform Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC: Windows

Modes Single-player, Multiplayer

Series Halo

PEGI Rating 16+

More Xbox Games

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.