343 Industries Rebrands to Halo Studios & Future Halo Projects Are In Development

The end of Halo World Championship 2024 held in Seattle, Washington last Sunday had Halo fans coming to learn of  the developers behind the iconic Halo franchise, 343 Industries making the decision to rebrand themselves into Halo Studios. This reveal was made alongside several other announcements. One of which had revealed the developer’s intention to part ways with the old engine, Slipspace Engine which they used for Halo Infinite. Another big announcement is the shift into using Unreal Engine 5 for their future Halo projects which they also confirmed that they’re working on multiple titles currently.

The announcement was first revealed prior to the grand finals of the event, in the form of a 7-minute video. In the video, the team showed off Project Foundry, an experimental project designed for demonstrating the technical prowess of how Halo would be built with the Unreal Engine.

The shift from their in-house Slipspace Engine to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 isn’t really a change that came out of the blue. Development on their latest title, Halo Infinite was quite an ordeal as the team struggled really hard due to the used tools dating as far back as the early 2000s. In fact, an interview posted recently by XBOX Wire, art director Chris Matthews shared that “Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,”. He also added that “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.”

However, the team is feeling determined with the drastic changes that they have made through this decision, which is for them its like pressing the hard reset button especially with Pierre Hintze and Elizabeth Van Wyck taking charge. As mentioned earlier, multiple new projects are currently underway. Though, no release dates were revealed with the studio simply stating that they will be “ready when they’re ready.” Nevertheless, the future of Halo seems very exciting, with this fresh new start for the team.

Join Us!