Yesterday, Microsoft confirmed its plans for roughly 10,000 layoffs throughout the company, with Halo developer 343 Industries reportedly "hit hard" by the job losses.
While the company restructure hasn't been fully detailed by Microsoft, and some of what's coming out regarding 343i are just reports right now, the whole situation does throw up questions about the future of the current Halo title.
After a lengthy delay, Halo Infinite finally arrived on Xbox in late 2021 - a full year after it was first set to launch alongside the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles. At the time of its delayed arrival, there was hope that the team could deliver on its long-term plans for the game.
Since then, 343 Industries has struggled to introduce meaningful content at a quick enough pace, especially in a competitive market where live service games are continuously vying for the attention of gamers.
However, it's still improved a lot since launch just over a year ago, with the developer continuing to build on the game's solid foundations. Online campaign co-op and Forge mode arrived in late 2022, on the back of a year filled with small-scale updates and events that were fun to keep up with, given how enjoyable Halo Infinite's core gameplay is.
The question is, should the team further commit to the future of Halo Infinite in a big way, or is it time to move on from this iteration of Halo?
We've heard reports that 'Project Tatanka' from Certain Affinity is set to bring a battle royale to the game at some stage, but for now, that's restricted to rumours and reports. That'd certainly be a huge addition though, and would showcase real commitment from Xbox.
However, given we've heard nothing concrete on 'Tatanka' more than a year after the game launched, and the fact that online co-op and Forge are considered by many as 343 merely finishing off core Halo Infinite features, there's certainly a case to be made for now moving on when it comes to core development.
Whether such a move would be another mainline 343i Halo game is another big question, with fans starting to point towards other developers potentially having a crack at Halo. While we can't see that happening anytime soon, the case for moving on, from Infinite at least, becomes potentially stronger as time goes by. We can expect the series as a whole to stick around for a good while yet anyway, whatever form that takes!