According to reports quoted by industry insider Brad Sams, Bonnie Ross’s departure as head of 343 was due more to Halo Infinite‘s financial failure than to any medical reasons.
After 27 years at Microsoft, 343 Industries founder and Microsoft veteran Bonnie Ross announced her retirement last week, citing a family medical emergency. David Berger, who had been in charge of Halo’s technical development for the previous 14 years and had worked at Microsoft for 25 years, also left the firm soon after.
Brad Sams, an insider, claimed in his most recent podcast that sources are telling him the two high-profile departures were not a coincidence but rather symptomatic of a huge shakeup at 343.
The state of Halo Infinite is dire. According to Sams, the game is not in a good place and has failed to meet the expectations that Microsoft had for 343 at launch. According to rumours, I’ve heard, the business end of things isn’t doing very well either.
Season 3 of Halo Infinite will release in March of next year, and for Sams, that was the last straw. The testing for Forge mode will also continue, and there will be brand new maps, weaponry, and a battle pass available to players.
After effectively what they stated for season three, I’ve heard from numerous sources that this is a management turnover at Microsoft, as explained by Sams. As far as I’m concerned, the camel’s back finally snapped with the most recent disclosure of facts… A radical shift is being implemented by Microsoft now.
Microsoft wanted Halo Infinite to be a live-service game like Destiny, but the attempt was doomed to fail from the start. Fans have suggested that Microsoft just hand over Halo to Activision following the two firms’ merger, and Sams has responded by claiming that this isn’t as simple as it seems because Halo runs on an entirely proprietary engine. According to Sams, Microsoft hasn’t even come close to recouping the hundreds of millions of dollars it spent developing Halo Infinite.
