343 Industries has been metaphorically kicked in the butt, as Microsoft is now letting them work on the Halo franchise with a smaller role…

Bathrobe Spartan, a trusted insider on the Halo IP, has a new rumor about the future of the franchise. He has heard from current and former 343 Industries developers that the studio has been downsized in 2023 and this year, leaving 280 of the 500 employees that were previously employed. The internal communications and marketing teams have been laid off as they are now managed directly by Microsoft. The Redmond-based tech giant has no confidence in 343’s in-house development capabilities, so Halo will be made at other studios, leaving them to do the concept and pre-development work and then just oversee the development…

Who will be developing Halo? Bathrobe Spartan says there are two major projects in pre-production. One of them will include a multiplayer mode with many players. It’s not known what these two projects are, but speculation is that one could be Halo: Combat Evolved, a remake of the first episode, and the other could be a new Halo episode (and the latter could have the big multiplayer component). Halo Infinite, despite being relatively successful in terms of sales, did not meet Microsoft’s expectations. For this reason, only Forge will be supported once the content still in development is released.

This makes it the third major studio above Master Chief, because it was originally launched under Bungie, which has become one of the most important IPs on Xbox. However, Bungie wanted to focus on Destiny, so Microsoft ended up handing the development over to 343 Industries. And they were rumored to have failed. Who will be the new leader? Earlier in the rumors, Certain Affinity had surfaced. But we may hear more about what’s going on with Master Chief soon.

It’s not official yet, but it sounds realistic.

Source: WCCFTech