Microsoft has announced major changes to one of its main game series, Halo. The studio responsible for developing games in the franchise, 343 Industries, is changing its name to Halo Studios, and all future projects will be developed on the Unreal Engine 5.
The studio already has several projects in the works, but hasn't shared any details about them yet. However, in the interview, they talked about the transition from their own Slipspace Engine to Unreal Engine 5. According to the company, UE5 has many features that developers would like to copy from Slipspace Engine, but it would require a lot of time and resources, so it was decided to simply switch to Epic Games' engine for new games.
“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” explains Studio Art Director, Chris Matthews. “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."
By the way, the studio confirms that several Halo games are currently in the works, but their details will be shared in the future. In addition, along with the name change and the transition to Unreal Engine 5, Halo Studios is reorganizing its structure so that developers can work more efficiently on future projects.
“At the end of the day, if we build the games that our players want to play, that’s how we’ll be successful,” explains Van Wyck. “That’s what should motivate what we build. That’s also what this structure has done – we want the people that are day-in-day-out making the games to be the ones to make the decisions on the games.”