Halo Infinite Leadership Shakeup Continues
If you jump into a time machine back to mid-August, I wrote up a lengthy post about what insiders were saying about Halo Infinite’s development process. Just like when I reported that Microsoft/343 was considering shipping Infinite in pieces, which was later confirmed, I was initially drug through the swamps of the Halo community as spreading misinformation.
But since that post went live, Halo brought back Joseph Staten to get Halo ‘back on track’ and earlier this week on First Ring Daily and on Twitter, reported that I was hearing about more leadership changes at 343.
Over the weekend, I was hearing that Chris Lee, a long-time veteran of the company who had been there since 2008, was no longer working on the project. According to Bloomberg, he is still technically a Microsoft employee but the company is not saying if he is working on a new project at this time.
At this point, there is no denying that the development of Halo Infinite is not going according to the company’s plans. The title is currently delayed to 2021 without a publicly announced release date and with new leadership being brought in, this signals that things are not running smoothly behind the scenes.
With the consoles launching in about two weeks, it’s clear that Microsoft had a massive marketing effort lined up for the release with Infinite being at the center of that effort. The delay is hurting the company’s console launch but it’s better to release a game late than to release a title that fails to meet expectations.