- 343 Industries has announced that it is rebranding to Halo Studios.
- For future Halo titles, the proprietary Slipspace Engine will be replaced by Unreal Engine 5.
- Halo Studios showcased visuals powered by Unreal Engine 5 for what it is calling Project Foundry.
There are some significant changes taking shape at the developer behind the Halo franchise – 343 Industries. For one, that company no longer exists for all intents and purposes, as it announced during its 2024 Halo World Championship over the weekend that it would be rebranding as Halo Studios.
A video (embedded below) was shared on its official YouTube channel too, detailing the reasons behind the change, but perhaps more importantly for gamers in the interim, that work has begun on a new title for the long-running and much-beloved franchise.
While details were short in terms of what the story, official name, or release date for the game would be, we were treated to some visuals powered by Unreal Engine 5 (UE5).
That was the other significant aspect of the announcement, with 343 Industries Halo Studios replacing its proprietary Slipspace Engine with UE5. The reason for this is simply that too many resources were needed to keep the proprietary engine up and running, so Halo Studios has opted to leverage the skills of another company instead.
“The way we made Halo games before doesn’t necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future. So part of the conversation we had was about how we help the team focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines,” noted COO, Elizabeth van Wyck, in an Xbox blog post.
“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old. 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,” added Studio art director, Chris Matthews.
Moving forward, and powered by UE5, a team at Halo Studios has begun working on what the next title in the series could be.
“The team had to be sure that the first Halo games to come out of a non-Slipspace engine would look, feel, and sound right. The team began experimenting, and it resulted in a research project known as Project Foundry,” explained Xbox.
Whether this is a working title of a project that will eventually become the final release or simply a testbed for what the next game could be, remains to be seen, but it is clear that Halo Studios is keen to explore what is possible with UE5 first, before it dives head first into the fully fledged development of a game to surpass the solid, albeit unimpressive outing that was Halo Infinite.
“It isn’t just an exploration of what’s possible with this engine – it’s a true reflection of what would be required for a new Halo game using Unreal, and a training tool for how to get there. Foundry has been made with the same rigor, process, and fidelity as a shipped game would be,” Xbox continued.
“Everything we’ve made is built to the kind of standards that we need to build for the future of our games. We were very intentional about not stepping into tech demo territory. We built things that we truly believe in, and the content that we’ve built – or at least a good percentage of it – could travel anywhere inside our games in the future if we so desire it,” pointed out Matthews.
For now it is unclear when a new Halo game will be released, with Halo Studios staying mum on the subject.
What is clear, however, is that under the new moniker, it wants to make the Halo series the flagship offering within the Xbox ecosystem again, with Bungie and 343 Industries viewed as two previous chapters in the game’s history, and Studios being the next one.
It will be interesting to see whether those lofty ambitions can be realised given how many developers are culling workforces while continuing to push employees to deliver brilliant games.
