Halo Infinite, Game Updates, and the Future of Xbox (Premium)

343 Industries revealed a major change in how it will update Halo Infinite going forward. Does this signal the enshittification of the title, or is this just another clue that the golden age of unlimited free video game updates is coming to a close?

It could be a bit of both.

First, the news: In a live stream Friday, 343 Industries revealed that Halo Infinite will not receive any more major updates as part of lengthy "seasons" events but will instead be supported with shorter "operations" that will run for shorter time periods and deliver much less new content. It's likely that the amount of new content Halo Infinite receives going forward will just keep getting smaller and then disappear in time.

Given how long this game has been in the market---Halo Infinite was finally released in December 2021 after a 13 month delay---one might argue that 343 has done enough. But remember that the initial release still fell short of expectations and was missing key features, like campaign co-op and the Forge level builder. We didn't get a "full" Halo Infinite experience until almost a year later.

But as with other big Microsoft game studio releases, there were a ton of updates. 343 rushed to fill in the blanks over five seasons of updates in the next two years, each accompanied by events, maps, game modes, and other content. And there were dozens of other smaller updates that included, among other things, most of the features that were missing at launch.

Despite all that, Halo Infinite never generated the excitement of the original game trilogy it visually and sonically emulates, and it was never clear what, if anything, could reverse the relative lack of interest given the blockbuster nature of this franchise.

Until fairly recently, 343 was expected to release a season 6 for Halo Infinite as soon as the end of January. But during this past week's live stream, 343's Brian Jarrard explained that things had changed. There won't be any more seasons going forward, and 343 will now ship a smaller Halo Infinite update on January 30 called Content Update 29 (CU29) that will include a few updates and be accompanied by what's described as "the first of three operations." Reading between the lines a bit, it appears that these three operations will collectively deliver on everything fans had previously expected in season 6.

We might have passed that off as a simple semantic change, but then Jarrard casually dropped a little bombshell.

"We have a dedicated team working on supporting Halo Infinite and continuing to deliver coming forward," he said during the closing minutes of the hour-long live stream. "But, yes, we also have additional teams now that are accelerating towards the future working on brand-new projects."

Even a small hint about a possible new Halo title is interesting. As was Jarrard's mention right after this revelation that 343 is hiring, a comment I believe was made to deflect any worry about the future of the game maker...