343 Industries, the first-party Xbox developer best known for the modern Halo games, including 2021’s Halo Infinite, will have substantially less involvement in the franchise’s next projects, which have been rumored to include Halo 7 and a remaster of Halo: Combat Evolved, the original 2000 title from Bungie, according to a new report that alleges the studio isn’t in a great spot right now, with employees having been cut down from 500 personnel to less than 280. Bathrobe Spartan, who shared the news in a lengthy thread on X yesterday, suggests that 343 will only function in a supervisory role going forward, merely providing concept and pre-production work for future titles in the franchise.
A breakdown of some of the info that has been shared online:
- “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…both MS and 343i new management seem confident of a new, more effective development approach (Bathrobe Spartan clarified this).”
- “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.”
The original word from Bathrobe Spartan:
The State of 343 Industries
— Bathrobe Spartan 🎧 Podcast Halo (@BathrobeCast) July 14, 2024
🏢 Structure & headcount
🌋 Impact on Halo & Infinite
🪙 New Production Method
➡️ Won't have time to make a proper Thread like usual (you'll soon know why) so you'll get a TL;DR version instead.
🧵⬇️ pic.twitter.com/e38LtDzFKp
A launch trailer for Anvil, Halo Infinite’s latest content:
343 on Anvil’s new Big Team Battle mode:
Adjutant Resolution, one of Zeta Halo’s submonitors who you met and fought in Halo Infinite’s campaign, has decided to jump into some multiplayer action. Two of them—simply known as “sentries” in this context—are on each team; your objective is to protect your sentries and destroy the enemy’s.
Each team has 2,000 points. As damage is dealt to your sentries, the available score drops, and if you reach 0 it’s game over. Each map will have at least one Repair Field that spawns in a neutral location—in addition to providing health regeneration for your fellow Spartans and vehicles, it’ll also repair your sentries.