343 Industries, a brief history.

343 Industries (shortened to 343i) are the primary and current developers of the critically acclaimed Halo franchise. Founded 17 years ago in 2007, 343i was created entirely to take the reins of the Halo franchise from Bungie. Bungie, the development studio behind the creation of the Halo and Destiny franchises decided after the creator of Halo 3, they wanted to split from Microsoft and start working on other projects. Microsoft did not like this, Halo 3 was the most successful and highest grossing entertainment product EVER. Microsoft made a deal with Bungie to make 2 more halo games before handing the franchise rights to Microsoft and then splitting off. They made Halo 3: ODST, a spinoff using Halo 3’s engine and assets and Halo Reach, a prequel set before Halo CE. After Halo Reach launched, Microsoft let Bungie split off, and 343i took the reins in 2010 and started by fixing and updating Halo Reach’s multiplayer and making a remaster of Halo CE. 

Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary (referred to as CEA) was a remaster of Halo CE in the Saber3D engine using ported reach assets released in 2011 for Halo’s 10^th anniversary. Halo CEA (not the MCC port) came with a multiplayer experience with remastered Halo CE Multiplayer maps for PVP and the firefight wave-based mode. The multiplayer and campaign are two separate games, the multiplayer is based off Halo Reach’s engine and gameplay. The development of Halo CEA was done by Saber Interactive (343i and Certain Affinity assisted development). Critical reception was decent scoring an 82% on Metacritic, it’s a decent remaster but the tone and graphics were criticized by fans for not matching the original.

Halo 4 was released on November 6^th, 2012, by 343 Industries and Certain Affinity. Halo 4 picked up the main story of the Halo Franchise after bungie finished the original halo trilogy with Halo 3 in 2007. Halo 4 was the first title in the new “Reclaimer Trilogy”, later confirmed by Microsoft studios corporate vice-president to be a “Reclaimer Saga”. Halo 4 was received very well by critics earning a IGN rating of 9.8 and a Metacritic score of 87, Fans however had issues with its heavy deviation from the Bungie Game’s art style, gameplay, tone, story structure, and multiplayer. Even with these issues Halo 4 has an IGN user rating of 7.6 and a Metacritic user score of 7.1. 343i was off to a decent start (as far as full games go from a new company), with a quality game that was critically well received and decently received by the fans.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection (referred to as MCC) was released on November 11^th, 2014, and included Halo CEA, the new Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, and Halo 4. MCC had a horrible launch, plagued by rampant matchmaking issues and bugs. 343i shortly fixed these issues and issued an apology 13 days after launch and then in December of 2014 they announced as an extended apology they would give anyone who played the game at launch a free month of Xbox Live, an avatar nameplate, and a downloadable copy of Halo 3: ODST. Later in 2015 Halo 3: ODST was officially released into the MCC. Halo 2 anniversary was also included in this package as a brand-new remaster of Halo 2 done by Saber Interactive and Blur Studios. Halo 2 Anniversary was widely regarded as a much better and faithful remaster of Halo 2 using new assets that matched the style and fully pre-rendered cutscenes made by Blur Studios.

Halo 5 was released on October 27^th, 2015, by 343 Industries. Halo 5 was initially received well by critics but criticized for having a bland campaign and what appeared to be trend-chasing for the time, Halo 5 got a Metacritic score of 84 and an IGN rating of 9/10. Fans rated Halo 5 much lower due to its bad campaign, further deviation from the source material, trend-chasing gameplay mechanics, and overcomplicated art-style, Halo 5 earned a Metacritic user score of 6.4 and an IGN user score of 6.9. Halo 5 was also the first game to introduce live service aspects like microtransactions in the form of loot boxes called “REQ Packs” with unlockable armor and warzone (large-scale PVE mode) consumables, Halo 5 was also had about 2 years of post-launch support with 11 major named updates including major additions like Forge (map editor), A plethora of new maps, modes, and armor customizations, Infection, a Custom Game Browser, Xbox One X enhancements, Big-Team-Battle, etc.

Halo MCC had a major overhaul at the end of 2019 including the addition of Halo Reach and the launch of Halo MCC on pc during 2020. Halo Infinite released on November 15^th, 2021 (multiplayer) and December 7^th, 2021 (campaign). Infinite was developed by 343i in collaboration with SkyBox Labs, Sperasoft, The Coalition and Certain Affinity. Infinite had a staggered release with a Suprise multiplayer “beta” that released on Halo’s 20^th Anniversary with the campaign releasing a few weeks later. Infinite was critically well received and praised for its campaign, art style, and gameplay receiving a Metacritic score of 87 and an IGN score of 9/10. Fan’s rated Halo Infinite lower due to its lack of content but praised the game for its return to form to the style of the older games. It’s important to mention how bad Infinite’s content drought was at launch and during its entire 1^st year of its “live service”, Halo Infinite launched with 4 modes and 10 maps and it’s first 2 seasons lasting an entire year until the content pace picked up. Whilst it’s in quite a good state today, it took quite a while for that to happen which has put off many fans and outsiders alike. Halo Infinite has an IGN user score of 7.8 and a Metacritic user score of 7.9.

343 Industries has been through many, many controversies throughout the years. Halo MCC’s launch was a massive controversy with its unstable and broken multiplayer matchmaking as mentioned above. Halo 5’s marketing campaign “Hunt the Truth” had live-action TV ads that hinted towards a rivalry from its two main characters, when the game finally came out this “rivalry” was boiled down to a 2-minute cutscene and not much else. Halo 5 was also controversial for it’s REQ packs (loot boxes) being predatory and being pay to win. Halo Infinite was full of controversy even before launch. During Xbox’s E3 showcase in 2020, Halo Infinite had its first gameplay reveal, whilst the gameplay and general art style was praised, the graphical quality was heavily mocked and criticized, causing 343i and Microsoft to delay the game by an entire year. When Halo Infinite launched, it’s lack of content caused quite a stir in the Halo community even causing the r/Halo community to be shut down over death threats sent to the developers. The last major controversy was in 2022 when a roadmap was released with whilst good content, it was extremely sparse and separated, the Halo community at large went on a witch-hunt resulting in Founder and Former-CEO Bonnie Ross to resign and the entire company to be restructured.

Halo Infinite went on to have major content updates until January 2024, since then it's been minor content and feature updates. It sucks because this was really just as they got going with good major updates and getting some of the halo community and outer gaming community coming back. Finally, earlier this month (october 2024), 343 industries announced their movement to unreal engine and their rename to "Halo Studios". 343 industries had a good run but frankly after the many dramas and the restructing of the company, it's already practically a different studio and the name just carried a lot of bad blood.

(small note: this was originally a college essay but I updated it and reformatted it for here. (hi ven if you see this its john its not plagarism i swear))

Works Cited

“343 Industries.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Sept. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/343_Industries.