343 Industries Will Only Supervise Development of Future Halo Games

Fenton

Veteran
22 Feb 2023
1,179
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Bathrobe Spartan, who has proven reliable regarding the popular series in the past, recently revealed some new information on the franchise's future and its developer.

  • In 2023 and 2024 343i internal employees were cut down from around 500 to less than 280.
  • The internal 343i communications and marketing teams were cut and now it's directly MS which manages them (some members of the old teams were transferred to the MS ones)
  • The reliance on outsourcing increased as MS is not confident in 343 internal developing anymore *ouch*
  • So for the next Halo projects 343 will just work on the Concept and Pre-Production phases (along with the "Lore check") while actual Production would be done by other SH, only supervised by 343 (similar to what done with Halo Wars 2 with Creative Assembly)
  • 2 new big Halo projects in the works right now (most probably Halo CE Remake and Halo "7"), both in Pre-Production phase and the sooner release not until 2026 at least. One of them, probably Halo "7", will have a much higher players' number MP (so probably including the "Tatanka" MP project legacy made for 100+ players and in the works at Certain Affinity, initially planned for Infinite)
  • Only 30% of current 343i is actually developing game contents, while all the rest are project management, producers and business roles
  • Budget is now much more controlled by MS (which made new hires slower and more difficult as one of the results)
  • Halo Infinite made a lot of money but still didn't meet MS targets for it. Now on "life support" after releasing already contractualized contents with external suppliers, with remaining support on Forge contents only

 

Draven

Newbie
28 Jun 2024
17
29
I would give Halo to MachineGames to work on. Most people would obviously tell iD Software to do it but the question would be do they want to make a Halo? Now that Doom is on top?

MachineGames is now without FPS franchises or a clear future project, I guarantee they can do a better job than 343.
 
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Yurinka

Veteran
VIP
21 Jun 2022
7,715
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Bathrobe Spartan, who has proven reliable regarding the popular series in the past, recently revealed some new information on the franchise's future and its developer.

  • In 2023 and 2024 343i internal employees were cut down from around 500 to less than 280.
  • The internal 343i communications and marketing teams were cut and now it's directly MS which manages them (some members of the old teams were transferred to the MS ones)
  • The reliance on outsourcing increased as MS is not confident in 343 internal developing anymore *ouch*
  • So for the next Halo projects 343 will just work on the Concept and Pre-Production phases (along with the "Lore check") while actual Production would be done by other SH, only supervised by 343 (similar to what done with Halo Wars 2 with Creative Assembly)
  • 2 new big Halo projects in the works right now (most probably Halo CE Remake and Halo "7"), both in Pre-Production phase and the sooner release not until 2026 at least. One of them, probably Halo "7", will have a much higher players' number MP (so probably including the "Tatanka" MP project legacy made for 100+ players and in the works at Certain Affinity, initially planned for Infinite)
  • Only 30% of current 343i is actually developing game contents, while all the rest are project management, producers and business roles
  • Budget is now much more controlled by MS (which made new hires slower and more difficult as one of the results)
  • Halo Infinite made a lot of money but still didn't meet MS targets for it. Now on "life support" after releasing already contractualized contents with external suppliers, with remaining support on Forge contents only

Sounds realistic and understandable. I think it makes sense and it's similar to what I'd do in their case, on top of something they already do: to have periodical meetings between the heads of each department of all their studios -at least the similar ones, in this case the shooters or GaaS- to share knowledge and experiences, and also to create shared best practices documents and guidelines.

I think 343 could get a lot of help in this area / learn a lot from people like the CoD teams, ID Software, etc.
 

Neversummer

Veteran
27 Jun 2023
1,512
1,488
MS still using contractors for there key Xbox franchise is embarrassing. Ig they got COD now so no need to worry.

Wonder if this will happen to COD. Because it certainly look like that same thing happen w Minecraft.
 
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Englishy

Member
6 Jun 2024
59
100
Expected. Now that they have COD (the actual Halo killer, ironically enough) they can afford to reprioritize all of their future Halo projects.
 

2spooky5me

Veteran
12 May 2024
521
454
@Dr Bass

Phil Spencer should just rip the band-aid off now. There's no point in dancing around it.
Take out 343, and merge the "best" of the group into the core Xbox, 1st party team.
 

Shadow2027

Well-known member
15 Dec 2023
412
513
Just port MCC and the online for that to PS5.
But its a good thing 343 is downgraded, that whole clown show has destroyed the series and seems like a prime example of hiring for checkboxes than talent
 

voke

Veteran
10 Jan 2023
2,559
3,305
I wonder if Halo dies to the Call of Duty machine as well. It's a juggernauts franchise that needs thousands of people to keep afloat. There's a reason why all of Activision eventually went on to work on CoD.

i'd imagine the top suits dont't gaf about halo when they have cod right there.
 
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