Halo Infinite has been delayed from a holiday launch to sometime in 2021, the development team announced Tuesday.
“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,” developer 343 said in a blog post. “We know this will be disappointing to many of you and we all share in that sentiment. … The extra time will let us finish the critical work necessary to deliver the most ambitious Halo game ever at the quality we know our fans expect.”
It’s an unexpected move, seeing as Microsoft has been pushing Halo Infinite hard as the primary reason to purchase the upcoming Xbox Series X console. The move means Microsoft is delaying its biggest launch title.
The delay is due, in part, to the situation created by COVID-19, making Halo Infinite the most prominent game delay of the pandemic. And it raises questions about the status of others.
It also leaves Microsoft in a precarious position. Beyond Halo, the day one launch lineup for Series X has been rather anemic so far. That could put the system at a severe competitive disadvantage in relation to the PlayStation 5 when both consoles launch this holiday season.
Chris Lee, studio head for the game, said it was “not sustainable for the well-being of our team or the overall success of the game” to ship it this holiday, indicating 343 has opted against a heavy crunch schedule. He was not certain that even having the team work longer hours would have resulted in an optimal result.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.