343 Industries is no more as Halo moves to Unreal Engine 5

Today one of Microsoft's biggest game studios made a big announcement: 343 Industries is no more, and has been replaced by Halo Studios.

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Armed with a bold new vision for the future, 343 Industries has changed its name to Halo Studios. This swap comes at a pivotal point for the group, as the team has now become a game studio first and foremost, shedding its focus on the archaic and difficult proprietary Slipspace Engine that powered Halo Infinite.

Halo Studios made one thing very clear in its announcement video: a new era of Halo is here...and gone are the days of old. Things have changed for the Halo series and the people that make it.

"At the end of the day, if we build the games that our players want to play, that's how we'll be successful. That's what should motivate what we build," Halo Studios chief operating officer Elizabeth Van Wyck said in an Xbox Wire post.

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The bold new direction will allow Halo Studios creatives to plot out game development without having to juggle the extra work of optimizing for a first-party games engine. Instead, Halo will now be made with Unreal Engine 5, a pivot that will help iterate Epic's potent games technology while Halo devs unleash their creativity.

"If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters. Chapter 1 - Bungie. Chapter 2 - 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we're not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games. So, we start a new chapter today," said VP and studio head Pierre Hintze.

"It feels like a new beginning for the studio in a lot of ways. I think that's pretty rare," said lead game designer Dan Gniady.