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343 Industries Rebrands To Halo Studios, Swaps To Unreal Engine 5

343 Industries is no more as the company has rebranded itself to Halo Studios, and have also swapped over to Unreal Engine 5

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Article Summary

  • 343 Industries rebrands as Halo Studios, marking a new era for the iconic game developer.
  • Halo Studios transitions to Unreal Engine 5, enhancing game development efficiency and quality.
  • The switch from Slipspace Engine allows faster content delivery to meet changing gamer expectations.
  • Unreal Engine 5 enables Halo Studios to focus on multiple projects and satisfy fan demands.

343 Industries has officially rebranded its company to match the only thing they really make, as they have become Halo Studios. The company made the announcement at the Halo World Championship this evening with the video presentation you see above, but that wasn't the only announcement to come from the team. They also revealed they have switched everything they do over to Unreal Engine 5, as team members Pierre Hintze (Studio Head), Elizabeth Van Wyck (COO), and Chris Matthews (Studio Art Director) discuss the future of the studio and the new direction their titles will be going in as far as development. Below is a snippet of the official announcement from Xbox Wire for you.

343 Industries Rebrands To Halo Studios, Swaps To Unreal 5 Engine
Credit: Halo Studios

Halo Studios

Switching from the studio's proprietary Slipspace Engine to Unreal is a key part of that change. Previously, 343 Industries needed a large portion of its staff simply to develop and upkeep the engine its games ran on.  "We believe that the consumption habits of gamers have changed – the expectations of how fast their content is available," says Hintze. "On Halo Infinite, we were developing a tech stack that was supposed to set us up for the future and games at the same time."

As gaming evolves, and players increasingly point out how long it takes to see new games from their favorite series, the team at Halo Studios felt the need to react. As COO Elizabeth van Wyck puts it: "The way we made Halo games before doesn't necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future. So part of the conversation we had was about how we help the team focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines."

Alongside the wider changes to how the studio is set up (which you can read more about below), adopting Unreal means Halo Studios is more able to create games with a focus that can satisfy fans – even setting up multiple teams to create different games simultaneously. But Unreal also comes with in-built benefits that would have taken years of work to replicate with Slipspace: "Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old," explains Studio Art Director, Chris Matthews. "Although 343 were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time, which are unavailable to us in Slipspace – and would have taken huge amounts of time and resources to try and replicate.

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Gavin SheehanAbout Gavin Sheehan

Gavin is the current Games Editor for Bleeding Cool. He has been a lifelong geek who can chat with you about comics, television, video games, and even pro wrestling. He can also teach you how to play Star Trek chess, be your Mercy on Overwatch, recommend random cool music, and goes rogue in D&D. He also enjoys hundreds of other geeky things that can't be covered in a single paragraph. Follow @TheGavinSheehan on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Bluesky, Threads, and Hive, for random pictures and musings.
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