Don’t get your hopes up about the Halo franchise being rescued from over a decade of mediocrity because 343 Industries isn’t going anywhere.
Instead, Microsoft has recognized that the studio responsible for driving the once-reliable Halo franchise into the ground is in such dire straits that it needed a rebrand.
Halo developer 343 Industries is undergoing a major overhaul as the future of the franchise starts to take shape again. The studio has officially rebranded itself as “Halo Studios,” with multiple new games in development for the Halo universe.
However, rather than sticking with Halo Infinite‘s Slipspace Engine, essentially a forked evolutionary variant of Bungie’s old Blam engine from 2001, the franchise is about to become the latest casualty of developmental incompetence by switching to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5.
The newly rebranded Halo Studios has announced that all future Halo games will be developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, with several titles already in production. The studio was quick to showcase some stunning proof-of-concept imagery, highlighting the visual potential of a Halo installment on UE5 dubbed “Project Foundry.”
While the engine offers impressive graphical capabilities, it’s been plagued by issues related to both developer inexperience and the premature feature set of the engine itself excluding the cancerous blurry nature of TAA antialiasing.
Gamers have widely criticized Unreal Engine 5 for being poorly optimized, particularly for PC ports. Games built on or ported to UE5 mid-development often suffer from significant technical issues, such as overdraw problems, poor frame rates, and severe frametime inconsistencies leading to the notorious “stuttering” that has frustrated players across multiple titles.
Despite the engine’s promise, these technical challenges remain a concern for future Halo releases.
We’ve previously discussed the issues stemming from Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite and Lumen technologies, which, while intended to optimize detailed geometry and provide an in-built solution for global illumination, ultimately hamper performance. Developers struggle to work around these quirks, as they are unable to fully optimize their assets to function efficiently with UE5.
Given 343 Industries’ troubled history, the situation is even more concerning. Entrusted with Microsoft and Bungie’s golden Halo franchise, 343 repeatedly undermined it with retcon-filled releases.
Their latest installment, Halo Infinite, was a multiplayer-focused, monetized spectacle that launched prematurely despite years of development time, further illustrating the studio’s inability to capitalize on their resources.
343 Industries had seven years to develop Halo Infinite, yet the game was delayed after its July 2020 gameplay demo became a meme due to widespread backlash from gamers mocking its poor character designs.
When Halo Infinite eventually launched in November 2021, nearly a year and a half later, it debuted as a free-to-play experience, lacking meaningful gameplay content and interactive features.
However, it did come loaded with microtransactional cosmetics, seemingly to compensate for the absence of substance. The single-player campaign, released in December, was poorly received, continuing the trend of disappointment following 343’s previous Halo entries, including Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians.
Rumors once circulated that Microsoft might do the unthinkable by severing ties with 343 Industries, purging the studio from Halo‘s future and moving development elsewhere.
This gave hope to fans of Master Chief, who were already disillusioned by the franchise’s progressive live-action TV series. However, this wasn’t to be the case.
Instead of folding, 343 Industries went on a hiring spree and has now rebranded itself as “Halo Studios,” likely in an effort to distance itself from its troubled past. This move mirrors how General Motors rebranded Daewoo as GM Korea to escape the tarnished reputation of producing unreliable shitboxes.
This rebrand is meaningless. It’s still 343 Industries, just under a new name. Microsoft is heavily invested in BlackRock’s ESG agenda and DEI initiatives, which is evident from their upcoming rebooted versions of Perfect Dark and Fable.
It took three extra years after Halo Infinite‘s launch for its multiplayer to evolve into a fully fleshed-out experience. Even then, development was outsourced to several other studios, with SkyBox Labs acting as co-developers, and Sperasoft and Certain Affinity handling much of the multiplayer component.
The rebrand changes nothing about the underlying issues and 343i’s dependence on outsourcing development.
Multiplayer content has leaned heavily into frequent microtransactional additions, such as $10 cat-ear Spartan helmets and LGBT pride-themed emblems, nameplates, and armor camouflages.
Halo has shifted into yet another emasculated live-service multiplayer spectacle, much like Call of Duty and Fortnite, where players are enticed with free-to-play access, only to be hit with overpriced cosmetic items marketed through limited-time FOMO (fear of missing out) tactics.
The gradual shift away from proprietary game engines to off-the-shelf engines like Unreal is primarily a cost-cutting measure. AAA game development in the Western world frequently exceeds the $100 million milestone, and the only way for these games to stay profitable is to sell millions of units or sustain a large enough player base to monetize with regular $15 cosmetic bundles.
By following in the footsteps of CD Projekt Red and abandoning their more expensive, purpose-built engines in favor of Unreal Engine, 343 Industries is cutting development costs while ensuring that less-experienced developers, often straight out of coding boot camps, can contribute more effectively right from the start.
These developers are certainly already familiar with widely-used engines like Unity or Unreal, making the development process easier and the transition smoother for the studios.
The newly rebranded Halo Studios, under the leadership of Melissa Boone, is looking to move forward by working on multiple game projects. However, fans of the Halo franchise are likely to be disappointed once again with the next installment, which will likely be bland and buggy in terms of story and technical execution.
Nonetheless, it’s expected to impress journalists, assuming such journalist publications remain operational by around 2026-2027, despite the typical stuttering issues associated with Unreal Engine 5.
