While I hope you're correct, I can't share your optimism. Halo has always boasted its unique engine, granting developers the freedom to craft the game according to their vision. With the shift to Unreal, they'll need to play to its strengths and navigate its limitations. Moreover, games built on the same engine often share visual traits, potentially weakening Halo's distinctive identity.
But what price vision if they spend 90% of the time and money building the tool and 10% of the time coding the game? Especially when no other game uses the engine.
In the Bungie era the games came out every 3 years but it took 6 years to get Infinite (without Forge) out and it's been three years already with crickets chirping on the campaign side. Where's the vision? Going into getting the online right?
Or maybe they've been working on Unreal already?
The key point being made in the blog post is that with a proprietary engine new hires have to start by learning the engine, not developing. By going to Unreal the new hires start working on production code sooner. And don't forget, XBOX layoffs have come mostly from support staff and management but other studio shutdowns and game cancellations have released experienced coders. Going to Unreal lets them fish in troubled waters as it were.
It's a business and the economics of the 2024 gaming business are not the economics of 1999. Not many games can return profits on $300-500M budgets, even games that rack in $400M at launch. A big number, yes, but after 6 years?
Something had to change.
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