Multiple Halo games in development as the series transitions to Unreal Engine 5

Halo and developer 343 Industries are in the middle of a reset, bringing some fundamental changes to the iconic franchise. All future Halo games will be developed in Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, with multiple new projects currently in development, 343 Industries announced on Sunday. The new Microsoft-owned studio marks a “new chapter” for the series and is also rebranding as Halo Studios, bringing widespread changes to its operations.

Multiple Halo games in development

During Halo World Championship, 343 debuted new Halo footage rendered in Unreal Engine 5, featuring three different environments and series protagonist Master Chief. The footage, 343 said, is not from a Halo game in development, but is part of a ‘Foundry’ project that will serve as the basis for future Halo games.

The studio confirmed that the multiple Halo games, built in Unreal Engine 5, were in development, but did not provide timelines for those titles. 343 last worked on Halo Infinite, which launched in 2021.

Halo environments rendered in Unreal Engine 5
Photo credits: Microsoft/Halo Studios

Switch to Unreal Engine 5

In addition to the changes coming to Halo, 343 announced that it was reorganizing and changing its name to Halo Studios to reflect the new beginnings of the franchise. With a move to Unreal Engine, the developer will focus more on making games instead of spending time fine-tuning their own Slipspace Engine.

“Respectfully, some of Slipspace’s components are almost 25 years old,” said Chris Matthews, the studio’s art director, in an Xbox Wire after. “Although 343 has been continuously developing it, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time that are not available to us in Slipspace – and would have taken enormous amounts of time and resources to try to replicate, ” he added.

343, now Halo Studios, plans to shorten development times on future projects. The developer said it had to dedicate a significant portion of its staff to developing and refining the Slipspace engine for previous projects. “On Halo Infinite we were developing a tech stack that would make us ready for the future and at the same time for games,” said studio head Pierre Hintze.

The developer is also reorganizing and expanding, setting up multiple teams to work on several Halo games simultaneously. While Project Foundry’s footage sets the tone for what’s to come, don’t expect a Halo game to release anytime soon. Hintze said the studio will talk about the games in due course.

“We need to talk about things when we have things to talk about, on a grand scale,” he said. “Today is the first step – we’re featuring Foundry because it feels good to do so – we want to explain our plans to Halo fans and attract new, passionate developers to our team. The next step will be talking about the games themselves.”