The future of Halo is becoming clearer. During the Halo World Championships on Sunday, 343 Industries made several significant announcements, including the official rebranding to Halo Studios and the confirmation that it is working on multiple new games.
Additionally, the studio revealed that all future Halo projects will be developed on Unreal Engine, marking a departure from the Slipspace Engine that powered Halo Infinite.
These announcements were made in a seven-minute video that aired before the grand finals of the Halo World Championship, showcasing the results of Project Foundry, an experimental initiative to demonstrate a Halo game built using Unreal Engine.
While it’s essentially a tech demo, it offers a glimpse into a new era for Xbox’s flagship franchise following the release of 2021’s Halo Infinite.
This marks a major shift for the Halo series, especially given the substantial resources invested in developing the Slipspace Engine.
343 Industries, now Halo Studios, faced challenges with the Slipspace Engine during the development of Halo Infinite, partly due to its reliance on tools from the early 2000s.
Despite expectations that Slipspace would be the foundation for future Halo titles, the move to Unreal Engine represents a new direction.
“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” art director Chris Matthews explained in an interview with Xbox Wire.
“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.”
A report from early 2023 indicated that Halo’s developers were ready for a reset after significant changes within the studio, including a shift to Unreal Engine.
The report also noted that developers were pitching new Halo games and prototyping new ideas. Project Foundry appears to be the result of these efforts.
Halo Studios, under its new name, is moving forward under the leadership of Pierre Hintze and Elizabeth Van Wyck, with the studio currently working on multiple new games.
Hintze, Van Wyck, and others assumed leadership roles after the departure of studio GM Bonnie Ross in 2022 and series veteran Joseph Staten’s exit from Xbox in 2023.
The rebranding and engine switch follow Xbox’s earlier statement that it is “full speed ahead” on the next-generation successor to the Xbox Series X|S.
“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” Hintze said.
“[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”
