When Microsoft—an organization that made “$198 billion in income and $83 billion in working earnings” in 2022—made the choice to axe 10,000 employees final week, various these got here from their online game operations, significantly 343 Industries, the overseers of the Halo sequence.
343, hit now by a mixture of layoffs and key departures, doesn’t look like in good condition. As we reported final week:
“The layoffs at 343 shouldn’t have occurred and Halo Infinite must be in a greater state,” former Halo Infinite multiplayer designer, Patrick Wren, tweeted Wednesday evening. “The explanation for each of these issues is incompetent management up high throughout Halo Infinite improvement inflicting huge stress on these working onerous to make Halo the very best it may be.”
Even previous to yesterday’s layoffs, 343 Industries has been dealing with wave after wave of excessive degree departures as Halo Infinite struggled to ship new seasonal updates and options on time. Essentially the most notable was studio head Bonnie Ross’ departure final September. Extra just lately, multiplayer director and longtime Halo veteran Tom French revealed he was leaving in December. And yesterday, amid the chaos, Bloomberg reported that director and longtime Halo author, Joseph Staten, was headed to the Xbox publishing facet of the enterprise because the studio made the “tough resolution to restructure.”
These hits led to reviews final week that improvement on future Halo video games was going to be handed off to exterior studios, with 343 being relegated to a supervisory function. Stories which have seemingly led 343 to tweet the next assertion on the official Halo account, denying them (to an extent) and saying 343 “will proceed to develop Halo now and sooner or later”.
Halo and Grasp Chief are right here to remain.
343 Industries will proceed to develop Halo now and sooner or later, together with epic tales, multiplayer, and extra of what makes Halo nice.
Pierre Hintze
Studio head
That’s a brief assertion that does nothing to deal with the report that different studios may now even be making Halo video games (which isn’t that new anyway, given Inventive Meeting’s work on Halo Wars), nor does it handle the size of the layoffs it was simply hit with, but it surely does at the very least affirm that 343 themselves will nonetheless be immediately concerned not directly within the sequence’ future.
