It’s been so long since the release of Halo Infinite that we have forgotten that a battle royale of the franchise was in development. Perhaps you will not be surprised to know, then, that this modality has apparently been cancelled.
According to the podcast XboxErawhich usually has reliable information about what happens inside Xbox, Microsoft has already thrown in the towel with the battle royale of Halo. Certain Affinity, the studio in charge of development, canceled the project Not a long time ago. If the report is correct, they would have wasted two years, which is no small feat.
The last time we heard about the battle royale of Halo It was thanks to Bloomberg. His report, in fact, coincided with the wave of layoffs suffered by 343 Industries—responsible for managing all of the company’s video games. Halo– past year.
It was said that Tatanka, as said multiplayer mode was known internally, was still in development. However, at that time it was no longer clear whether it would be a battle royale or it would evolve towards a different proposal. Now, however, we know that his fate was the worst.
However, this news will not cause much disappointment among fans. First, because as already said, a lot of time passed and the expectation around the battle royale of Halo was decreasing.
On the other hand, because the multiplayer of Halo Infinite has improved significantly since its launch. Nowadays, content releases are more constant and 343 Industries has managed to offer an extremely fun and varied experience.
Halo He is already looking towards his next adventure, but far from a battle royale
Did we really need a battle royale of Halo? The truth is, no. In fact, It would have been quite difficult for him to succeed in a market already saturated with similar proposals. You can not deny that Fortnite, Warzone, Apex Legends and PUBG They share a large part of the pie, leaving in the shadows other titles that, despite being promoted by large companies, never managed to take off.
Likewise, 343 Industries does not have the luxury of investing its time and resources in projects whose success is not guaranteed. Once they managed to solve so many problems with the multiplayer of Halo Infinitechances are they are already looking towards the horizon, towards the future of the franchise.
During October 2022, the youtuber Sean W. echoed that 343 Industries already has a team working on the next Halo. Not only that, they would have also decided to bet on Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games’ next-generation graphics engine. This would save them a significant amount of time, since the home-made development tool—Slipspace Engine—caused them too much confusion.
More recently, in August of last year, 343 Industries was discovered to have multiple positions open to work on its next big project. Considering that all their efforts are dedicated to Halo, we can sense what is coming. Of course, it is surely several years away.