Phil Spencer states that “The heart and soul of Halo is with 343 Industries”

After Microsoft recently laid off more than 10,000 employees across all of its divisions, many studios under the Xbox umbrella were affected as well. 343 Industries, developers of Halo was one of those affected, and not long after the news broke, reports began to claim that the studio had been pulled from development. Halowith future installments that would be developed by external studies.

343 Industries moved quickly to refute those rumors, stating that it would continue to develop games for Halo for single and multiplayer in the future, and now, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has joined those comments. recently speaking with IGNsaid that while development support from outside studios, including Sperasoft, SkyBox Labs and Certain Affinity, remains standard practice, 343 Industries will remain “critically important to the success” of the franchise.

“What we’re doing now is making sure the leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan that they need to build. And Halo will continue to be critically important to what Xbox is doing, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.

In terms of supporting studies and other things, that’s just part of development and having other partners help us. But the heart and soul of Halo is with 343 and the team that is there, and I have the utmost confidence in the team that is there and leading and the plan that they have for the future.”

Speaking specifically about Halo InfiniteSpencer said that 343 Industries, which is now under the leadership of Pierre Hintze, has “a very good plan” for the game and his support going forward.

“When we released that game, we knew we needed to make some compromises with people about content updates and our time on them and quality, and we didn’t meet our own standard for doing that. I believe in the team that is there, Pierre and the leadership team, and the plan that they have. Obviously, he’s the head of the studio now, he’s been at Halo for a long time. He has worked on [Halo: The Master Chief Collection]You have done a great job there. The team has a very good plan”.

Earlier this month, 343 Industries confirmed that it was on track to release planned content for Halo Infinite until June.