343 calls Halo Infinite 'the start of the next 10 years for Halo'

(Image credit: Microsoft)

It's taken five years for 343 Industries to make Halo Infinite, and by the sounds of it, we won't be seeing a Halo Infinite 2, or a Halo 7, or whatever you want to call it, in the years after its release in late 2020.

"We want Infinite to grow over time, versus going to those numbered titles and having all that segmentation that we had before," Halo Infinite studio head Chris Lee said in an interview with IGN. "It’s really about creating Halo Infinite as the start of the next ten years for Halo and then building that as we go with our fans and community."

Lee called Infinite a "platform for the future," but it's unclear what that means. IGN claims Halo Infinite will not be a live service game, but the only way for Infinite to realistically serve as a "platform" in place of numbered titles is for it to receive updates and expansions, much like a live service game. The difference could perhaps be those expansions delivering wholly separate campaigns, rather than tying into one ongoing story.

Halo Infinite will seemingly have a self-contained story, and one that Lee claims won't require knowledge doled out in Halo spin-off novels and comics, a problem with both Halo 4 and Halo 5. "This time players will have the freedom to explore the ring, but we are telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end that we want to carry the player through as you go," he told IGN.

Infinite still doesn't have a set release date, but is set for a "Holiday 2020" release on Xbox and PC. We'll have more on the campaign in the near future.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

Latest in Halo
Saber Interactive's head honcho pulled a wild stunt to nab the Halo: Combat Evolved remaster, telling Microsoft he'd do the job for free before ultimately squeezing the publisher for millions
Halo 2 e3 2003 demo
Halo 2's playable E3 2003 demo is an astounding feat of preservation, and everything great about PC gaming
Halo Infinite
Welcome to shooter bizarro world: First Fortnite goes FPS, now Halo Infinite's adding a third person mode
Team members standing in an underground cave
'Y'all killed it': Survive the Undead, a community-made PvE zombie mode, is bringing players back to Halo Infinite
Halo Redshift fan mod Trailer Still
Check out the trailer for this big, cooperative Halo campaign mod
halo infinite season 3 echoes within
Halo Infinite is done with seasons, will get smaller 'content updates' from now on
Latest in News
Key art for the new Age of Empires 2 expansion showing an angry Viking and Japanese warlod.
Age of Empires 2 team continues to cook while delivering 'legendarily long' 8,000-word patch notes about 'the biggest updates' the 26 year-old game has ever had
Max, protagonist of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Double Exposure, stares with trepidation at something off-screen with her friend.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure reportedly a 'large loss' for Square Enix, says analyst, who adds: 'The company's IP fundamentally varies too much between good and bad'
R.E.P.O. screenshots
'REPO is fun': Lethal Company creator recants their criticism of the new co-op horror game after trying to move a grand piano through a mansion
A "sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting," or essentially a virtual reality tongue in an artificial mouth
Would you like to taste fish soup in VR? Me neither, but this electronic tongue does it anyway
Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro gaming mouse on a blue background
The DeathAdder V3 Pro is currently so cheap it's put the usually more affordable HyperSpeed version out of a job
KOTOR remake returns for annual tradition of reminding you it's still alive, but no you can't hear anything more about it until it comes back next year to say it again