Halo's Move to Unreal Engine could be the spark that ignites a wildfire

Unlike previous entries in Halo franchise, 2021 Halo infiniteruns on a proprietary engine called Slipspace. Created in-house by 343 Industries, this engine was designed to accommodate the game's world-class semi-open design while maintaining the classic Halo gameplay that players have come to know and love. Slipspace could largely do what it set out to do, but it caused a lot of problems underneath Halo infinites development. Compared to other contemporary software, the engine was frustratingly difficult to work with, largely because some of the coding tools it used were really outdated. 343's heavy reliance on contract workers didn't make matters any easier, as each new developer was assigned to work with Infinite needed to be trained to use Slipspace.




The difficulties caused by the Slipspace Engine and the constant cycling of contract workers at 343 Industries contributed to major setbacks in Halo infinites content pipeline. At launch, the title lacked various multiplayer features that were a staple of the game Halo series, such as split screen co-op. Some of them were eventually added in subsequent content updates, but post-launch support for Halo infinite was so slow that player count and overall sentiment towards the title declined significantly over time. To fix this problem, Microsoft recently announced that all future Halo Games will be developed on Unreal Engine 5 from now on. This upheaval for Xbox's flagship franchise is significant, and it could be the catalyst for other MS first-party studios to make the transition to UE5 as well.


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Many Xbox games already run on Unreal Engine

Microsoft is no stranger to using the Unreal Engine for its first-party games. Many of the company's latest titles already use Epic Games' popular software. Sea of ​​Thieves, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Switches 5and even Based are all games that run on some form of UE. In addition to both these titles and the next Halo games, a significant portion of Xbox's upcoming first-party releases use Unreal Engine 5 as well. inExile's steampunk RPG Clockwork Revolutionof the initiative Perfectly dark reboot and Compulsion Games' Southern Gothic action-adventure title South of midnight are just a few examples of these.


A significant portion of Microsoft's First-Party Studios use proprietary engines

Despite the many UE5 games in development, Xbox still uses and owns the rights to a handful of proprietary engines. idTech, for example, is the flagship engine designed by Microsoft's subsidiary id Software, and is primarily used in games published by Bethesda Softworks, such as Doom Eternal and the coming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Starfield, Fallout 76and other Bethesda Game Studios titles meanwhile run on the Creation Engine, while Zenimax Online's The Elder Scrolls Online uses HeroEngine. Then there's ForzaTech, which is the same engine used in boats Forza franchise and 2025 Fable restart. Another Microsoft-owned engine worth noting is Call of Dutys IW engine.

Doubling down on Unreal Engine 5 could be beneficial to Xbox in different ways

A range of engines are used in Xbox's first-party studios, but as with Halo series, it is possible that Microsoft might want to consolidate them and move most of their resources to the Unreal Engine to make development easier. After all, if all developers under MS were to use the exact same engine, it would make it much easier for them to support each other more often. That, in turn, could allow Xbox's first-party games to be released at a faster pace.


A broader pivot to the Unreal Engine could also allow Microsoft to hire contract workers more often, as they are usually familiar with well-documented engines like UE. While it's unlikely that Xbox would remove all of its proprietary engines, encouraging its first-party studios to use UE5 could be a way for the company to prevent certain situations. Halo infinites troubled development with Slipspace, from happening again.

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