As Halo Infinite’s release looms closer, a major internal shakeup has just been revealed regarding the game’s creative director and his role within 343 Industries. Tim Longo has officially departed the Halo studio ahead of Infinite’s Fall launch for next year in part of a leadership shift happening now within the company.
Rumors of his departure have been swirling for a few days now but Microsoft just confirmed the news in a statement to Kotaku:
“Roles and responsibilities of various team members regularly evolve to meet the needs of a game, throughout development. We have recently had two changes to the Halo Infinite development team. Our Executive Producer, Mary Olson will now take charge of the Campaign team on Halo Infinite as the Lead Producer, utilizing her many years of experience at 343 to help craft a great campaign for fans.
“Additionally, Tim Longo has recently departed our team and we are truly thankful for his many contributions to our games, our studio and the Halo universe. We wish Tim nothing but the best in his future endeavors.”
As for who else is leading the charge, Microsoft continued by saying “The overall creative vision and production of the game remains led by Chris Lee, Studio Head of Halo Infinite.
“We have a world-class team building Halo Infinite and the overwhelmingly positive response by fans has us energized, more than ever, to create the best Halo game to date, alongside Project Scarlett in holiday 2020. These changes have no impact to the release date for Halo Infinite.”
While not unheard of depending on developmental progress, the change is one that we didn’t expect to see in this final stretch. We will be learning more about the upcoming game and what this change means for its progress, but it won’t be for awhile. 343 has previously confirmed that they won’t be showing off anything new until E3 NEXT year.
As for Halo Infinite itself, we still don’t have a release date but it’s slated for Fall 2020.
