The makers of modern day Halo titles, 343 Industries, is officially rebranding itself as Halo Studios from this point on. The Microsoft-owned studio was originally created to take over the franchise after its original creator, Bungie, left Microsoft shortly after the release Halo 3, and has since become an independent studio (later bought by Sony’s SIE division).
343 Industries Rebranded As Halo Studios
The announcement was made ahead of 2024 Halo World Championship, and with it comes the transition to Unreal Engine 5 – the highly-popular game engine already adopted by several high-profile releases this year, in this case replacing the studio’s own Slipspace engine. As with all UE5-powered games, the tech demo shown in the video is nothing short of an eye candy.
One reason for the switch is cited as the high resource cost of upkeeping the proprietary Slipspace engine. Halo Studios Art Director Chris Matthews stated, “although [343 Industries] were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that [Epic Games] 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.”
Another benefit, as Xbox Wire Editor-in-Chief Joe Skrebels points out, is that UE5 is also widespread in the industry, meaning any talents and 3D artists can easily pick up as soon as they join the studio and not worry about re-training themselves to be familiar with custom gaming engines and their associated workflows. “With the move to Unreal, the on-ramp is shorter, the experience is there, and the series can grow far more quickly and organically than ever before,” he wrote.
Despite the engine switch, Halo Studios promises that the game’s essence, be it in graphical fidelity, physics, sound, and the experience will “respect and reflect the true soul of Halo.” The studio confirms that several upcoming titles are in the works, with the transition to Unreal Engine 5 that allows the studio “to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible,” as stated by studio head Pierre Hintze.
Pokdepinion: Hopefully that means more time to polish the games, with how long game development gets these days.
