Halo developer 343 Industries has announced they are changing their name to Halo Studios with immediate effect. They have also announced they are switching to Unreal Engine 5 from Slipspace Engine, the reason for the change is Unreal Engine is familiar with the gaming industry and new staff joining would have to learn how to use the Slipspace Engine. Alongside the change to Unreal Engine, they have confirmed multiple Halo games are in the works. Here is more info below…
We’re entering a new dawn for Halo. Those new visuals were created using Unreal Engine 5 – and we learned that all future Halo projects will use the engine, and that multiple new games using it are in development. Alongside the engine change, the studio is seeing changes in culture, workflow, and how its teams are organized. To match that new approach, franchise stewards 343 Industries are changing their name – Halo Studios is here.
Studio Head Pierre Hintze defines this less like a clean break, and more like the turning of a page:
“If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters. 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.”
The First Step
Switching from the studio’s proprietary Slipspace Engine to Unreal is a key part of that change. Previously, 343 Industries needed a large portion of its staff simply to develop and upkeep the engine its games ran on. “We believe that the consumption habits of gamers have changed – the expectations of how fast their content is available,” says Hintze. “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.”
As gaming evolves, and players increasingly point out how long it takes to see new games from their favorite series, the team at Halo Studios felt the need to react. As COO Elizabeth van Wyck puts it:
“The way we made Halo games before doesn’t necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future. 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.”
Alongside the wider changes to how the studio is set up (which you can read more about below), adopting Unreal means Halo Studios is more able to create games with a focus that can satisfy fans – even setting up multiple teams to create different games simultaneously. But Unreal also comes with in-built benefits that would have taken years of work to replicate with Slipspace:
“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” explains Studio Art Director, Chris Matthews. “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.
Beyond the Visor
So, let’s talk about what’s coming beyond Foundry. As you might expect, the team isn’t talking about exactly what those new games will be right now – we’re at the beginning of this new chapter, not the final stages, and it’s fair to say that a new Halo game isn’t imminent. Halo Infinite will still be supported through the Slipspace Engine – you can expect more Operations, and updates to its Forge mode. In esports, Year 4 of the Halo Championship Series, using Halo Infinite, has just been announced. But in the background, the next steps for Halo will be taken.
The quietness is by design. Hintze makes clear that the priority right now is on doing the work, not simply talking about it:
“One of the things I really wanted to get away from was the continued teasing out of possibilities and ‘must-haves’. We should do more and say less. For me, I really think it is important that we continue the posture which we have right now when it comes to our franchise – the level of humility, the level of servitude towards Halo fans.
“We should talk about things when we have things to talk about, at scale. Today, it’s the first step – we’re showing Foundry because it feels right to do so – we want to explain our plans to Halo fans, and attract new, passionate developers to our team. The next step will be talking about the games themselves.”
What is clear is that, yes, it’s Halo games – plural – in development right now. Where Halo Infinite saw practically the entire studio focused on a single, evolving project, Halo Studios has recalibrated:
“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” says Hintze. “[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”
A major part of this shift has been in reorganizing the structure of Halo Studios as a whole, in order to give development teams what they need to make something new.
“At the end of the day, if we build the games that our players want to play, that’s how we’ll be successful,” explains Van Wyck. “That’s what should motivate what we build. That’s also what this structure has done – we want the people that are day-in-day-out making the games to be the ones to make the decisions on the games.”
The team will also be seeking more input from outside the studio on those decisions:
“We’re seeking earlier and earlier, wider and wider feedback from our players,” she continues. “We started that with The Master Chief Collection, and carried that on with Halo Infinite, and we want to do it even more for our next projects. At the end of the day, it’s not just how do we evaluate, it’s how do our players evaluate it?”
343 Industries was founded to create Halo games but the impression I get is that, in its new incarnation as Halo Studios, the studio has been retooled to put the focus entirely on that goal – without distraction, without impediment, to create better games with players’ hopes and wishes at the heart of the endeavor.
“You asked why we consider this as a new chapter,” says Hintze. “We want a singular focus. Everyone is in this place is here to make the best possible Halo games.”
Source: Xbox News