In a new interview with media outlet IGN, Xbox Head Phil Spencer discussed the importance of 343 Industries to the Halo franchise.
In the interview, Phil Spencer talked about 343 Industries in the last few weeks, which resulted in the studio posting on its Twitter account that it will still continue to work on the franchise.
“What we’re doing now is we want to make sure that leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan that they need to go build,” Phil Spencer says. “And Halo will remain critically important to what Xbox is doing, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.”
When asked about the future of the Halo franchise even after the bitter mass layoffs that happened with the studio, Spencer stopped in his tracks and told them to let 343 speak about it.
“I’m going to let 343 talk about the plans that they have right now, that people know they have the next season that’s coming up, and they’re excited about that,” Spencer revealed.
“They’ve got some other things, some rumored, some announced, that they’ll be working on. They’re excited about the plan forward. I look at, say, the work that they’ve done on Forge and the amazing support we’ve had from creators there.”
Last week, Microsoft officially confirmed that it had planned to lay off approximately 4.5 percent of its 220,000-person workforce, which is about 10,000 – 11,000 people.
Reports revealed that this massive layoff affected 343 Industries and other studios under Xbox Studios. The former had a lot of people leaving particularly working on the single-player campaign section of Halo Infinite.