What’s next for Halo?

polygon.com:

Microsoft has a Halo problem.

343 Industries, the internal studio Microsoft created to make Halo games after parting ways with series creator Bungie, is in apparent disarray. A round of layoffs at Microsoft in January hit the studio hard. Recriminations followed, with former staff laying the blame for this — and for the perceived disappointment of Halo Infinite — at the door of “incompetent” leadership. It was reported that Joe Staten, a Bungie veteran drafted in to get Infinite back on track, was on his way out following the 2022 departure of several other leads, including studio head Bonnie Ross. It then became apparent that Halo franchise head Kiki Wolfkill had left too. Both the studio and Xbox chief Phil Spencer had to take the humiliating step of denying a rumor that 343 would no longer be working on Halo games directly, instead farming them out to third-party studios.

In late January, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier painted a picture of a studio “all but starting from scratch.” At least 95 people at the company had lost their jobs in the layoffs, including many key development staff. 343 will move from using its own Slipspace Engine — a point of pride for a developer that had always put its tech credentials to the fore — to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. No new story content for Halo Infinite is being worked on, Bloomberg reported, while unreleased multiplayer modes languish with tech troubles, and external studio Certain Affinity works on a possible battle royale-style spinoff. Polygon has also heard from multiple sources about the shift to Unreal Engine 5, and the Certain Affinity game.

Behind all this is the story of Halo Infinite. The third mainline Halo game from 343, Infinite was released in late 2021 to a