In news just breaking via the official HALO Waypoint website, the decision has been made to delay the release of HALO Infinite until 2021:
The statement reads:
Today I want to share an important Halo Infinite development update with the community. We have made the difficult decision to shift our release to 2021 to ensure the team has adequate time to deliver a Halo game experience that meets our vision.
The decision to shift our release is the result of multiple factors that have contributed to development challenges, including the ongoing COVID-related impacts affecting us all this year. I want to acknowledge the hard work from our team at 343 Industries, who have remained committed to making a great game and finding solutions to development challenges. However, it is not sustainable for the well-being of our team or the overall success of the game to ship it this holiday.
We know this will be disappointing to many of you and we all share in that sentiment. The passion and support the community has shown over the years has been incredible and inspiring. We wanted nothing more than to play our game with the community this holiday. The extra time will let us finish the critical work necessary to deliver the most ambitious Halo game ever at the quality we know our fans expect.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
Chris Lee
Studio Head, Halo Infinite
My Thoughts…
I honestly can not say I am surprised though it is very disappointing to read. If we are honest, the very fact that Xbox built their entire “Part 1” Xbox Studios Showcase event just a few weeks ago around a game clearly not ready to be shown to anyone is rather worrying. Now in August the leaks are coming out faster than Microsoft is releasing official news, with the Xbox Series X controller packaging revealing the official name of the Lockheart version of the Series X, a reported less powerful all digital version which will be far cheaper than its bigger brother and in the unboxing video currently on YouTube, the manual shows a warranty expiry date of November 2021, and as Xbox products tend to have a 12 month warranty, this could suggest November 5th this year as a possible release date for the Series X and S.
But in terms of HALO Infinite, the gameplay shown visually alone was no where near what the Series X is supposed to offer with character models looking rather “last gen” and no evidence of Ray Tracing. Following the showcase event it was confirmed that the demo was running on a PC and not an actual Series X console which only made it worse for fans questioning what they were seeing.
End of the day, it is better to delay a game and allow it the proper time to be developed that fans and 343 Industries expect, especially with COVID 19 impacting the world as much as it is and continues to do so. But now the question has to be…..what the hell does Xbox Series X launch with because HALO Infinite was the big exclusive whilst Hellblade 2 seems to also be a 2021 title.
August is going to be very interesting for very nervous Xbox Fans.
