Summary
Halo’s2024 Halo World Championship saw an unexpected announcement.343 Industriesis no more. The studio,which has been responsible for the Halo franchise since 2011, has now rebranded itself to simply — Halo Studios.
The announcement,which was accompanied by a longer documentary-style video, also revealed that the Slipspace Engine is also no more. Future Halo games will be running on Unreal Engine 5. And yes, games, because “multiple” games are seemingly in development.
According to Halo Studios, it’s a new chapter. “If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters,” studio head Pierre Hintze said. “Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games. So, we start a new chapter today.”
Halo Is Getting A Fresh Start In The Best Way
The accompanying video had various screens of Master Chief and the Covenant, all of which were created in Unreal. That’s the type of potential that the long-running franchise has in Unreal instead of Slipspace Engine. More so, it’ll also make things noticeably easier for its developers as the Slipspace Engine required an all-hands-on-deck-like approach.
That, plus the desire to create new experiences more oftenas game development times and budgets skyrocketare part of the foundation of the swap.
“The way we made Halo games before doesn’t necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future," COO Elizabeth van Wyck said in a post on Xbox Wire. “So part of the conversation we had was about how we help the team focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines.”
Moving to Unreal also has a third hidden benefit: familiarity. As more gaming developers, both old and new, are familiar with Unreal as opposed to a proprietary engine, it’ll make things on the recruiting side decidedly easier. In other words, the development-wide familiarity will help developers onboard sooner and get to impacting games right away.
As mentioned above, “multiple” new Halo projects have been confirmed to be in the works. It’s important to note that no announcement is imminent. More so, Halo Infinite and the Slipspace Engine it runs on will still be supported. Either way, it’s a new era for Halo in seemingly the best possible way.
