This is a summary of the long thread from Bathrobe Spartan which you can find here: https://x.com/BathrobeCast/status/1812578845108625769
343 kept losing people in 2023 & 2024. Lead to more outsourcing content. Contracts not being renewed. 50-60 people let go on top of the >100 laid off.
Some roles transferred to MS/Xbox Team instead of being internalized at 343.
343 still relying on contractors, staff are not pleased to see leadership has not learned from the production of Infinite.
Less than 280 employees as of May 2024, with 30% of them related to Game-Content-Production, the rest are business oriented roles & producers.
Not enough positions have been opened to fill the gap from what it was before 2023. ~32 permanent positions opened in 2023 & 2024. Not enough staff to be “Production Ready”.
343’s budget has been severely impacted and controlled. This is why recruiting took longer and pushed people to leave. Key roles couldn’t be replaced in time to finish content left.
Halo Infinite didn’t meet its commercial goals but made enough to justify finishing the content already contracted with external studios, but not enough to justify doing more than was started. Quote from an ex employee “No we made money, we made a lot of money. But when I walked into the test bay to test the latest build EVERY FUCKING DAY the guy running it said “why bother, they are gonna hate it anyway” that’s demoralizing. I would love to tell you what we worked on, but I can’t and won’t, not just because of the NDA but because I’m being loyal to the company. I still want to work there. It does bother me people praise Pierre, like, who do you think mandated Forge Maps going forward…”
Partnered forge maps not being high quality is due to to 343 being tied to legal obligations to fulfil the contracts but not enough time left to polish.
As the product did not reach its commercial goal, projection implied it wasn’t worth contracting new content outside cosmetics. Meaning no new sandbox additions.
During 2023 & 2024, many employees helped other Xbox studios on their products as most Infinite content was handled by contracted studios.
343 shifting to a new production method, separating “Leading development” and Production. Hiring lead positions to do the concept and pre-production in-house & handing off the production work to other studios, similar to Halo Wars 2. Recruiting less content-creating roles and more lead profiles to test, iterate and validate content and gameplay before working with external studios to go full production. 2 studios are currently partnered to work on 2 separate projects this way. Both still in pre-production. One is a bigger scale PvP oriented project. At least 2 years before any release.
Aim of this new production method is to help produce content for games at a reliable pace and more cost effective. Hopefully won’t lead to reproducing what happened with Infinite.
Remaining 343 staff have echoed they feel like 343 Industries isn’t as much “The Home of Halo” as it was promised to them. They hope this new method of production will be the best for the franchise.
Well Infinite was free to play, it was only the campaign you had to pay for, but even considering that, previous games you’d get the campaign and multiplayer in that one price, but for Infinite is was just the campaign and at launch it didn’t even have co-op like previous games
It didn’t launch with splitscreen co-op like previous games, or like Bonnie Ross (rest in pieces, you’re not missed) literally PROMISED on behalf of the company would never happen again after Halo 5 didn’t launch with splitscreen co-op. Literally the next game they made broke that promise.