In a surprising move, the developer studio of the famous Halo series, 343 Industries, has been renamed as Halo Studios. Several new projects in the series are announced to be under development using the Unreal Engine 5.
This announcement was made during the Halo World Championship event that started yesterday, where several glimpses of the series’ world were showcased using the renowned Unreal Engine 5. However, developers emphasized that these previews do not represent a new game but are just demonstrations of the capabilities of the new engine.
All previous installments of the series were developed using the Slipspace Engine, which was blamed for delaying the latest part of the series by a whole year and disrupting much of the planned post-game content.
The transition of Halo to UE5 and the renaming of the developer studio signal a new beginning for the series, especially with the announcement of several new projects already in development.
The future fate of the series, particularly regarding its availability on multiple platforms instead of being restricted to Xbox platforms like all previous installments, remains unclear but transitioning to a well-known engine like Unreal Engine 5 may indicate a shift towards multi-platform compatibility, a new approach that Microsoft has started adopting recently.
During the announcement session on Sunday, Halo Studios President, Pierre Heintz, stated that the shift to UE5 would help the team solve some of the development challenges they face and make problem-solving more fluid and efficient.
Studio Director Chris Mathews mentioned that their previous engine, Slipspace Engine, has now been around for 25 years, and while it received periodic updates, Unreal Engine 5 offers them many new options as Epic Games continues to develop and release updates for it on a regular basis, providing new features that are not available in their proprietary engine, significantly saving resources and effort.
Mathews added that transitioning to UE5 would enable the hiring of developers with experience in the engine, allowing them to quickly integrate and accomplish tasks.
As for the rebranding to Halo Studios, it is part of changes in its culture, workflow, and how development teams are organized. The involvement of the community in decision-making on new projects at an early stage of development is also included in this change.