Today 343 Industries announced via an image that can be found on both their twitter and blogpost that the game will be delayed from Holiday 2020 to 2021. The statement from studio head, Chris Lee, read as,
"Today I want to share an important Halo infinite Development update with the community. We have made the difficult decision to shift out release to 2021 to ensure the team has adequate time to deliver a Halo game experience that meets our vision."
Lee continues his statement discussing the many factors that played a part of the decision to ultimately delay the game, being the ongoing struggle with COVID-19, development challenges, and well being of their team and overall success. The entire statement can be read below.
Halo Infinite was set up to be the big launch exclusive with the Xbox Series X, with it's delay to 2021, that leaves a big gap in regards to launch titles for the Xbox Series X. At the moment, there is no release date for the Series X, so technically Halo was the only game set to be a release date for the console as in the past statements made by 343 stated that Halo Infinite will be ready at launch for the Series X. These statements were of course made before the global pandemic took hold on the entire year.
Halo Infinite is set to be the biggest and most ambitious Halo game to release, as reiterated in Lee's statement today. The game is set to launch the next ten years of the Halo franchise, meaning expectations for the series will be set at launch. For hardcore fans, the recent confirmation that we will be playing on Installation 07, aka Zeta Halo, has sparked major interest in exploring the open world, or open ring, environment.
Installation 07 being the last remaining ring from the original 12 rings, reduced in size, and held many forerunner facilities known as "The Palace of Pain" where experiments were conducted on ancient humans to discover a cure for the flood. For halo lore fans, the ring's very existence in the game is enough to be excited about, but only leads to the game truly being the most ambitious Halo game.
Halo will launch now sometime in 2021, but for more on Halo, be sure to check back to My Xbox And Me!