Microsoft put on an admirable show yesterday with its Gamescom event, showcasing beautiful Xbox/Windows titles such as Forza Horizon 5, but one thing that the company left out was a release date for one of its most anticipated releases of the year, Halo Infinite. It got some Halo fans questioning whether the game would suffer yet another delay, possibly into 2022, but apparently, that’s not a concern at all.
According to a source with The Verge, Halo Infinite will release on December 8, 2021, fulfilling 343 Industries’ earlier promises of a holiday debut. This means that Halo fans will be able to suit up as the Master Chief again before Christmas and spend most of their holiday break taking on the Banished in the campaign or other Spartans in multiplayer mode.
The date initially surfaced as part of an updated Halo Infinite listing on the Microsoft Store shared by Italian outlet Aggiornamenti Lumia. It had suggested that the game would be out on December 8, 2021, a date that has now been seemingly confirmed.
Halo Infinite was supposed to launch alongside Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles in November 2020, but it ended up getting delayed to late 2021. 343 Industries blamed that on the pandemic, but it presumably also had to do with Halo Infinite’s early gameplay footage being ridiculed for having relatively awful graphics, prompting a necessary overhaul to the shooter’s visuals.
Creative director and Halo veteran Joseph Staten recently revealed that Halo Infinite will not have campaign co-op and Forge at launch, but Halo fans will still be able to enjoy an epic single-player story and multiplayer component, the latter of which is free to play. The game will also be available on day one via Microsoft’s game subscription service, Xbox Game Pass.
JFYI: this Microsoft Store listing has been live since August 26, 2020, with a placeholder release date. They updated the entire store listing a few hours ago, with the new release date (and new description, screenshots…)
— Aggiornamenti Lumia (@ALumia_Italia) August 25, 2021
Halo Infinite’s development has clearly been bumpy, and Microsoft even assigned Bungie veteran Joseph Staten to head up development of the game nearly a year ago. While we haven’t seen a great deal of campaign gameplay since the infamous Craig meme was born last year, the first multiplayer technical preview looked and felt just like the Halo that fans will enjoy playing.
Source: The Verge