Image: Xbox Game Studios
343 Industries is rebranding itself as more Halo games enter development.
Halo developer 343 Industries is going through a massive revamp, as the future of the Halo game franchise begins to crystallise once again. This week, the game studio announced that it is officially rebranding itself as ‘Halo Studios’, with multiple new games in the Halo franchise now in the works. Instead of using Halo Infinite’s Slipspace Engine however, these new games will be developed using Unreal Engine 5.
Here’s the announcement:
Halo developer rebrands, announces more games in the works
Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries had a few major announcements to make during the Halo World Championships held over the weekend. First off, the studio is changing its name to Halo Studios, doubling down on its commitment to Microsoft’s iconic game franchise after the lukewarm reception of Halo Infinite. The studio is also abandoning its Slipspace game engine, which had been used to create Halo Infinite.
The studio will now use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 for all future Halo games, of which it has multiple already in development. This suggests that we might not just get a sequel to Halo Infinite, but a few spin-offs as well. The video announcement above shows off clips from Project Foundry, a project undertaken by the studio to test out what a Halo game would look like in the Unreal Engine.
In an Xbox Wire post, Halo Studios’ art director Chris Matthews commented on the engine change:
Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old. Although 343 were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time, which are unavailable to us in Slipspace – and would have taken huge amounts of time and resources to try and replicate.
Studio head Pierre Hintze also seems to think that the change will allow future Halo games to be made more easily:
We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite [but switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.
It sounds like Halo Studios is eager to make a fresh start with the Halo franchise, despite Halo Infinite already serving as a soft-reboot of the main story. Hopefully, it’ll work out better this time.