Reminding you all that I have a policy of not posting rumors out of nowhere and while Bloomberg has been the top of my exception and rule bends, is because their tracking “on being correct” and once again, this is regarding Halo and its future.

It is no secret that Microsoft and Xbox Game Studio would have love the first two years of Halo Infinite to have been more ease and wonderful experience, but it was not and while I am not recapitulating all that has happened since day 1 but highlighting Bloomberg noting that the recent layoff of Microsoft has already provoking effect.

343 Industries suffered the loss of 95 people during Microsoft general layoff of last week, which has limited all the fire extinguishing that the studio have been doing for Halo Infinite, but as Phil Spencer said, Halo remains important and the studio is already moving to the next thing.

Being short of staff meant that to move to the next big game or GAMES (yes plural), it needs focus and an expansion for Halo Infinite is already out of the question.

While an expansion was not “heavily promised” at all, this soft reboot of Halo has underdelivered by some fans, specially hardcore Halo fans.

Another effect is that 343 Industries is switching to Unreal Engine 5 instead of reusing their Slipspace Engine as is reportedly buggy and its difficulty to use has contributed to Halo Infinite troubled production and post-launch content.

The troubles resulted in a point that had forced 343 Industries to stop announcing Extraction and Assault and partly paralyzed development and the decision on switching to Unreal Engine was taken somewhere in 2022.

343 Industries has already developed some prototypes of Halo content with Unreal Engine 5 but the uncertainty is big as this is uncharted waters for the studio.

Last week it was heavily rumored that 343 Industries will transition to be a Halo owner and development of the game being licensed to other Xbox Game Studio or even outside developers as the formula of sharing projects with partners for Halo Infinite has prompted some positives for the games,but obviously that was proven wrong.