Halo Infinite Delayed Into 2021 Due to COVID Challenges

Written by Brandon Hofer on August 11, 2020

News: Like movies, television shows, and other media, COVID has wreaked havoc over Halo Infinite’s development requiring a delay.

If you were looking forward to playing Halo Infinite in 2010, unfortunately we have some bad news for you. Microsoft just revealed that Halo Infinite has been delayed until 2021. The major reason for the delay is COVID related, which is a big reason for many delays this year whether it is games, movies, or whatever. The team at 343 has been forced to work on the game remotely for a while now and that isn’t ending anytime soon either. So instead of putting their employees through an insane crunch period to hit an arbitrary date in November, they have moved it back until 2021.

For those wanting a more specific date, unfortunately, one has not been given. I assume we probably won’t get a specific date until we are close to it to try and prevent another delay. 343 (via the Halo Twitter) released the following statement:

”Today I want to share an important Halo Infinite development update with the community. 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. I want to acknowledge the hard work from our team at 343 Industries, who have remained committed to making a great game and finding solutions to development challenges. However, it is not sustainable for the well-being of our team or the overall success of the game to ship it this holiday.

We know this will be disappointing to many of you and we all share in that sentiment. The passion and support the community has shown over the years has been incredible and inspiring. We wanted nothing more than to play our game with the community this holiday. 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.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Chris Lee
Studio Head, Halo Infinite”

It will be interesting to see what this means for the launch lineup for the Series X. Neither of the consoles have really given any indication on what we can expect to see at launch but it should be an interesting holiday season nonetheless.

source: Twitter