When Microsoft is a company it made “$198 billion in revenue and $83 billion in operating income” in 2022 — last week we decided to lay off 10,000 workers. Many of them are from the video game business, especially 343 Industries.the supervisor of Hello series.
343 is currently hit by a combination of layoffs and major retirements, and it doesn’t look like it’s in good shape. As we reported last week:
“The layoffs at 343 shouldn’t have happened and Halo Infinite should be in better shape,” former Halo Infinite multiplayer designer Patrick Wren tweeted Wednesday night. “Both of these reasons are that incompetent leadership at the top during Halo Infinite’s development puts a lot of stress on the people who work so hard to make Halo the best it can be.”
Even before yesterday’s layoffs, 343 Industries was facing wave after wave of high levels of turnover. Halo Infinite We struggled to ship new seasonal updates and features on time. Most notably, the departure of studio head Bonnie Ross. last septemberMost recently, a multiplayer director and long-time Hello Veteran Tom French clearly He was leaving in December. And yesterday, in the chaos, bloomberg report Its director and longtime Halo writer Joseph Staten has turned to the Xbox publishing side of the business as the studio made “the difficult decision to rebuild.”
those hits Leading to last week’s report the next deployment Hello The game was taken over by an outside studio and 343 was relegated to a director role. Reports supposedly prompted 343 to officially tweet the following statement Hello Account, denies them (to some extent), stating 343 “continued development”. Hello Now and in the future.”
Halo and Master Chief are here.
343 Industries will continue to develop Halo, now and in the future, including the best of Halo, epic story, multiplayer, and more.
Pierre Hinze
studio head
This is a short statement that does not address any reports other studios may be making right now Hello Games (not all that new given Creative Assembly’s efforts) hello wars), and while it doesn’t even mention the scale of the layoffs that just hit, it at least confirms that 343 himself will be somehow directly involved in the future of the series.
