A moving spark in Halo's unreal engine could be the spark that ignites a forest fire

Unlike previous entries in hello Franchise, 2021 Hello infiniteRuns on a proprietary engine called Slipspace. This engine, built in-house by 343 Industries, was designed to accommodate the game's semi-open world class design while still maintaining the classic. hello The gameplay feels familiar and loved by players. Slipspace was largely able to accomplish what it set out to do, but it caused a number of problems Hello infinitedevelopment of Compared to other contemporary software, the engine was frustratingly difficult to work with, in large part because some of the coding tools it used were really old. 343's heavy reliance on contract workers doesn't make things any easier, as each new developer is assigned a job. infinite Training is required to use slipspace.




Difficulties caused by slipspace engines and continuous cycling of contract workers in 343 industries caused a major setback. Hello infiniteContent pipeline. At its launch, the title was missing various multiplayer features that were key hello Series, like split-screen co-op. Some of them were eventually added in later content updates, but for post-launch support Hello infinite It was so slow that the player count and overall sentiment towards the title decreased greatly over time. To solve this problem, Microsoft recently announced that all future hello Games will be developed on Unreal Engine 5 from now on. This shake-up is significant for Xbox's flagship franchise, and it could be the catalyst for other MS first-party studios to switch to UE5 as well.


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Many Xbox games already run on the Unreal Engine

Microsoft is no stranger to using the Unreal Engine for its first-party games. Many of the company's recent titles already use Epic Games' popular software. Sea of ​​Thieves, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Gears 5And also Grounded All games run by UE in some form or another. Apart from both these titles and another hello The game, an important part of the Xbox's upcoming first-party releases, is using Unreal Engine 5, as well. inExile's steampunk RPG Revolution of the clockof initiative Perfect Dark reboot, and the Southern Gothic action-adventure title from Compulsion Games south of midnight These are just a few examples.


A significant amount of Microsoft's first-party studios use proprietary engines

Despite the many UE5 games it is developing, Xbox still uses and owns the rights to a handful of proprietary engines. idTech, for example, is the flagship engine designed by Microsoft subsidiary id Software, and is primarily used in games published by Bethesda Softworks, such as destruction eternal and upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Starfield, Fallout 76and other Bethesda Game Studio titles, meanwhile, run on the Creation Engine, while ZeniMax Online's The Elder Scrolls Online Uses HeroEngine. Then there's ForzaTech, the eponymous engine used in both Forza Franchise and 2025 fable Reboot. Another Microsoft proprietary engine is worth noting Call of Dutyof IW Engine.

Doubling down on Unreal Engine 5 could be beneficial for Xbox in a number of ways

Xbox's first-party studios use an array of engines, but eg hello series, it's possible that Microsoft wants to consolidate them and shift most of its resources to Unreal Engine to make development easier. After all, if every developer under MS were to use the same exact engine, it would make it easier for them to support each other more often. This, in turn, could enable Xbox to release first-party games at a faster pace.


A broader pivot to Unreal Engine could allow Microsoft to hire more frequent contract workers, since they are generally familiar with well-documented engines like UE. While Xbox is unlikely to sunset all of its proprietary engines, encouraging its first-party studios to use UE5 could be a way for the company to prevent certain situations, such as Hello infiniteTroubled development with Slipspace, from happening again.

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