It’s the end of an era for 343 Industries, as the developer will be renamed Halo Studios and is apparently working on multiple Halo games.
Just yesterday, in this story about how Halo Infinite got a third-person mode, I noted that the future of the series was a bit uncertain since it wasn’t present at Not-E3, and then someone at Microsoft decided to It Makes Mischief After I packed up my desk for the day, I shared what the future holds for this series. Yesterday was the 2024 Halo World Championship, and ahead of it, the developer formerly known as 343 Industries shared a video with some big announcements for it and Halo.
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Right off the bat, you’ll notice that 343 is now called Halo Studios, with studio head Pierre Hintze explaining in an Xbox Wire post, “If you really break down Halo, there are two distinct chapters. Chapter One – Bungie Chapter 2 – 343 Industry Right now, I think our audience is hungry for more, so we’re not only trying to be more efficient in development, but we’re also starting a new chapter today.”
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Another big change is that Halo Studios will be switching from its proprietary Slipspace engine to Unreal Engine 5, which was first reported almost two years ago. The video above discusses Project Foundry, a research project to see what Halo would look like on Unreal Engine that has apparently been in the works for the past two years. While no actual gameplay was shown off, some different scenes familiar to Halo fans have been rendered in Unreal Engine, setting some expectations for what the new game will look like.
Speaking of new games, there are clearly multiple titles in development, and additional teams have been formed to develop them – just don’t expect to see any of them, as the entire announcement is really just a case of “don’t worry, Halo” The future is safe. “That obviously remains to be seen, but hey, it’s a big deal!
