4 years after the start of the “10-year plan”, support for Halo Infinite ended

Just two weeks after announcing a new remake, Halo Studios has confirmed that it will end updates to Halo Infinite to focus on several titles it has in development.

The news was announced in a lengthy blog post detailing the game’s next update, Operation Infinite. This update will be released on November 18. The studio has announced:

As we look back on four years of evolution and updates to Halo Infinite, we thank our fan community for their continued support. Without your feedback and passion, the game’s multiplayer mode would never have become the special space it is, a powerful arena for play and battle that has something for every Spartan.

With several games in the series in development, we need the full focus of all team members to deliver new experiences that are built with the same passion and care that the community has given us. While we continue to support Halo Infinite going forward, Operation: Infinite is the last major content update currently planned.

Halo Infinite was released four years ago, in December 2021, for PC and Xbox Series X/S. At the time, Hilo Studios, then renamed 343 Industries, announced that it had an ambitious 10-year plan to “tell new stories in the continuation of Master Chief’s adventure for years to come.” Chris Lee, former head of the studio, told IGN in 2020:

Halo Infinite is the beginning of our platform for the future. We want Infinite to grow over time, not to go back to numbering and separating parts. The goal is for Halo Infinite to be the beginning of the next 10 years of Halo and to expand it together with our fans and community.

Reports of the 10-year-old included massive multiplayer modes (including Battle Royale) and regular campaign updates. But in the years since launch, 343 Industries has undergone major changes, including massive layoffs, the departure of many key employees, and a move away from its in-house engine technology, which was partly blamed for slow post-launch support.

At last year’s Halo World Championship, Halo Studios announced that it was working on several Halo games that would be developed with Unreal Engine 5. The first game in this series was Halo: Campaign Evolved, which was recently announced for consoles and PC. The game is a complete remake of the first game in the series, Halo: Combat Evolved, which has no release date yet, but Microsoft has confirmed that the game will be released next year.

Source: VGC