Halo Infinite Pushed Back to 2021

In a somewhat surprising announcement 343 Industries let the world know that it’ll have to wait a little while longer to play Halo Infinite. Studio head Chris Lee said, “We have made the difficult decision to shift our release to 2021 to ensure the team has adequate time to deliver a Halo game experience that meets our vision.

The decision to shift our release is the result of multiple factors that have contributed to development challenges, including the ongoing COVID-related impacts affecting us all this year.” The move is necessary as the studio didn’t believe it’s possible to release the game in Holiday 2020 without putting an immense strain on their team members.

This is undoubtedly a reaction to the wave of negativity from the internet after the debut of campaign gameplay at their latest Xbox event. A lot of people weren’t happy with what they felt was subpar graphical performance for a game that is supposed to be a next-gen experience that wows players.

At first some of the more senior Xbox team members tried to push away the criticism by explaining that the footage was of an early build, and that the final product would be much improved. Unfortunately, these arguments didn’t sway the sentiment of the community or the gaming press; which ultimately led to the announcement made today.

This is a big blow for team Xbox. They were relying on having Halo Infinite be a driver of excitement for the launch of their new consoles. Now they’ll have to rely on more on third-party publishers to come good with experiences that take advantage of the new hardware.