When Microsoft – Inc who made “$198 billion in revenue and $83 billion in operating income” in 2022 – made the decision to lay off 10,000 workers last week, A number of these came from their video game operations, notably 343 Industriesthe supervisors of Hello a series.
343, now hit by a combination of layoffs and key departures, doesn’t seem to be doing well. As we reported last week:
“The layoffs in 343 shouldn’t be happening, and Halo Infinite should be in better shape,” Patrick Wren, the former multiplayer designer for Halo Infinite, wrote on Twitter Wednesday night. “The reason for both of those things is the incompetence of the leadership at the top during the development of Halo Infinite which put enormous pressure on those who work so hard to make Halo the best it can be.”
Even before yesterday’s layoffs, 343 industries were facing wave after wave of high-level dismissals infinite aura Strive to ship new seasonal updates and features on time. Most notable was the departure of studio head Bonnie Ross last September. Recently, a multiplayer manager and for a long time Hello Veteran Tom French open He was leaving in December. Yesterday in the midst of chaos bloomberg mentioned That longtime Halo director and writer Joseph Staten was heading into the Xbox publishing side of the company as the studio made the “difficult decision to restructure.”
those strikes led to last week’s reports This development in the future Hello The games were to be handed over to outside studios, with 343 being relegated to a supervisory role. The reports apparently led 343 to tweet the following statement on the official Hello The account, denying them (to some extent) and saying 343″ will continue to evolve Hello Now and in the future.”
Halo and MasterChef are here to stay.
343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future, including the epic stories, multiplayer and more that make Halo great.
Pierre Hintz
studio head
This is a short statement that does nothing to address the report other studios can now make Hello Games (which isn’t new anyway, given Creative Assembly’s work on Halo Wars), nor does it address the scale of the layoffs it just experienced, but it does at least confirm that 343 will still be directly involved in some way in the future of the series.
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