The wave of layoffs and various issues with the Halo Infinite graphics engine would lead to this change.
Whereas Phil Spencer reaffirming its faith in the studio behind the Halo franchise last week, the story seems to be different internally. At least it comes from Research conducted by Bloomberg.
According to the media, the wave of layoffs at the beginning of the year meant the departure of “at least 95 people”. A massive reduction in studio staff that raised questions about the studio’s continued development of the Master Chief series. A fear that so much Spencer as Matt Booty denied in an interview late last year.
The biggest change that would happen would be the transition to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, as already mentioned in October. The studio’s internal engine, Slipspace, would have caused the developers quite a bit of trouble to advance at the pace planned for the title. There’s talk of various “nearly finished, like Extraction and Assault” multiplayer modes that would have suffered from the weather.
The transition will therefore begin with the tatanka project. This Battle Royale mode started in collaboration with Certain Affinity could take another form according to several people within the company.
From the launch of Halo Infinite, fans have been waiting for single player content to arrive. However, investigation reveals that this was never on the table. Worse, among the dropouts at the start of the year were several developers who they worked on prototypes for future games of the license. Hopefully the Halo franchise will last for many more years, ideally with 343 Industries, which has done so well with games in the series.
