At the end of the 2024 Halo World Championships, 343 Industries made some big announcements about the future of Halo. The studio is rebranding as Halo Studios, and future Halo titles will now be developed in Unreal Engine 5, rather than Slipstream Engine. This move has also reignited speculation about Halo games potentially appearing on PlayStation 5. And according to industry experts, this will make porting Halo a lot easier.
“From a multi-platform game development perspective, moving to Unreal Engine 5 would certainly be easier for the developer than porting across the existing Slipspace engine,” said Digital Foundry’s Rich Leadbetter via Eurogamer. “It stands to reason that an engine designed for deployment across multiple platforms would be easier to work with than existing technology built for Xbox and PC.”
Earlier this year, The Verge reported that Microsoft was considering bringing more games to PlayStation 5, including Halo. While Halo is one of the primary Xbox franchises, cross-platform releases have already proven to be beneficial for Microsoft. Sea of Thieves found a new audience on PS5, and Bethesda has announced plans to bring Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to the console following a few months of exclusivity on Xbox Series X|S.
While switching to Unreal Engine 5 could lead to more titles being ported to PS5, that probably wasn’t the primary reason behind the change. Unreal Engine 5 is widely used in the video game industry, and there are more programmers experienced with that engine than programmers who are well-versed in Slipstream Engine. That means new additions to Halo Studios should be able to jump into their projects without any retraining.
Halo Studios hasn’t set a date for the next Halo game, but the 25th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved is only two years away. Microsoft has already indicated that it has plans to celebrate that milestone in 2026, which will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original Xbox. For now, we can only speculate whether that celebration will include a new Halo game.
