343 Industries is now Halo Studios, and it's welcoming a tidal wave of changes to keep up with how "the consumption habits of gamers have changed."
343 Industries, and before that Bungie, were always split between actively making new Halo games while also dedicating resources to update its proprietary tech. But the newly-rebranded Halo Studios has now announced that it's ditching its own Slipspace Engine in favor of Unreal Engine 5 - a decision that'll supposedly help the team release its multiple in-development games and post-launch updates quicker than ever before to feed gamers' gaping appetites.
"We believe that the consumption habits of gamers have changed – the expectations of how fast their content is available," Halo Studios' head Pierre Hintze said in an Xbox Wire blog post, likely referring to the live service boom that has well oiled machines like Fortnite and Call of Duty Warzone cranking out new stuff every week or so.
"On Halo Infinite, we were developing a tech stack that was supposed to set us up for the future, and games at the same time," Hintze continued. Obviously, Halo Infinite's slow post-launch support eventually killed its live service aspirations and probably inspired today's changes.
"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 explained. "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." Art director Chris Matthews put it more bluntly: "Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old."
Van Wyck explained that, sure, new Halo games can now come out at a faster cadence, but the studio revamp will also change "how long it takes for us to update the game, bring new content to players, adapt to what we're seeing our players want. Part of that is [in how we build the game], but another part is the recruiting." Switching to Unreal Engine has an extra side effect: Halo Studios doesn't need to dedicate time to catching new employees up on a relatively niche, creeky engine since UE5 is pretty much the most widely-used tech in the AAA space.
Halo Studios is now working on a mysterious Project Foundry - a research project built in Unreal Engine 5 where much of the content is "expected" to make its way into future Halo games, of which there are multiple "in development right now." The series stewards are still supporting Halo Infinite with a third-person mode, however, and Halo 2 is finally getting back that infamous E3 2003 demo that never made it into the final game.
