When Microsoft—a company that made “$198 cardinal successful gross and $83 cardinal successful operating income” successful 2022—made the determination to axe 10,000 workers past week, a fig of those came from their video crippled operations, peculiarly 343 Industries, the overseers of the Halo series.

343, deed present by a operation of layoffs and cardinal departures, does not look to beryllium successful bully shape. As we reported past week:

“The layoffs astatine 343 shouldn’t person happened and Halo Infinite should beryllium successful a amended state,” erstwhile Halo Infinite multiplayer designer, Patrick Wren, tweeted Wednesday night. “The crushed for some of those things is incompetent enactment up apical during Halo Infinite improvement causing monolithic accent connected those moving hard to marque Halo the champion it tin be.”

Even anterior to yesterday’s layoffs, 343 Industries has been facing question aft question of precocious level departures arsenic Halo Infinite struggled to vessel caller seasonal updates and features connected time. The astir notable was workplace caput Bonnie Ross’ departure last September. More recently, multiplayer manager and longtime Halo veteran Tom French revealed helium was leaving successful December. And yesterday, amid the chaos, Bloomberg reported that manager and longtime Halo writer, Joseph Staten, was headed to the Xbox publishing broadside of the concern arsenic the workplace made the “difficult determination to restructure.”

Those hits led to reports past week that improvement connected aboriginal Halo games was going to beryllium handed disconnected to extracurricular studios, with 343 being relegated to a supervisory role. Reports that person seemingly led 343 to tweet the pursuing connection connected the authoritative Halo account, denying them (to an extent) and saying 343 “will proceed to make Halo now and successful the future”.

Halo and Master Chief are present to stay.

343 Industries volition proceed to make Halo present and successful the future, including epic stories, multiplayer, and much of what makes Halo great.

Pierre Hintze

Studio head

That’s a abbreviated connection that does thing to code the study that different studios could present besides beryllium making Halo games (which isn’t that caller anyway, fixed Creative Assembly’s enactment connected Halo Wars), nor does it code the standard of the layoffs it was conscionable deed with, but it does astatine slightest affirm that 343 themselves volition inactive beryllium straight progressive successful immoderate mode successful the series’ future.