While many speculated that Microsoft would soon take 343 Industries behind the proverbial woodshed and finished the job it started last week of gutting the studio, a new report from Bloomberg offers a much brighter future for the company’s struggling first-party developer.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft plans to keep making new games in the popular Halo franchise, and those games will be coming from 343 Industries. In a recent interview, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty reiterated a similar sentiment about Halo staying a 343 Industries development, “343 will continue as the internal developer for Halo and as the home of Halo.”

With that being said, it’s going to be hard to keep the Halo franchise solvent after Microsoft gutted the studio and released dozens of veteran directors, producers, contractors, Q&A, and more last week. A not-so-insignificant portion of its five percent job reduction was aimed at 343 Industries and prior to the cuts at the studio, a shakeup in leadership was also another concern for gamers looking forward to future Halo releases.

Months before the massive layoffs were executed at 343 Industries, franchise stalwart Bonnie Ross left for personal reasons followed by leader of technical development David Berger also departed from the studio leaving the leadership vacuum to be filled by production lead Pierre Hintz, Bryan Koskie as GM and Elizabeth Van Wyck running business and operations.

It’s unclear at this point how this new grouping of leaders will fair with the current skeleton crew at 343 Industires but former employees have fingered the previous executive team as the main catalysts for the studio’s current situation such as designer Patrick Wren.

The layoffs at 343 shouldn't have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state. The reason for both of those things is incompetent leadership up top during Halo Infinite development causing massive stress on those working hard to make Halo the best it can be.

— Patrick Wren (@Witdarkstar) January 19, 2023

Leadership isn’t the only issue many saw with how the Halo franchise was being received. The more immediate problem for the franchise was arguably the underpinnings of development for Halo that included its Slipspace engine which has caused both developers and gamers frustration over the past twenty years.

According to the Bloomberg report, there are several multiplayer modes that were left out of the current Halo title but had been available for previous ones and have yet to be released due to issues with the game’s development engine. Despite being a two-decade old known quantity, Slipspace continues to be a bottleneck for the franchise and has arguably led to the poor outlook recent Halo games receive over their lifespan. Slipspace just isn’t keeping up.

While Microsoft has declined to comment on a pivot to a more plug-in-play engine such as Unreal as part of its studio reboot, it would benefit 343 Industires restart greatly to have staff and contractors working with a tool that a substantial portion of the industry understands intimately.

Fortunately, for some, Microsoft plans to continue support for Halo Infinite, while it figures out this new transitional period in the studio’s future.

Microsoft heralded Halo Infinite as a refreshing spearhead title for the next ten years of the franchise, as fans of the game, let’s hope the next time they say it, they mean it.

Even the biggest corporations and cloud operators have outages. Microsoft says an update on a public-facing router was the reason behind a muti-hour outage that impacted the Microsoft Wide Area Network last Wednesday.  The outage made parts of Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform inaccessible last week.

Prior to the outage, Microsoft did warn customers of an impending update that might cause latency or timeouts around 07:05 UTC on Wednesday.  As workers in Europe started the day it became clear the outage was more than just some packet loss and latency.  The issue began impacting connections inside Microsoft Wan including those between data centers and services including ExpressRoute, Microsoft’s private network which impacted the ability to transfer data between data centers.

Microsoft says in its preliminary incident review that most services were back up and running by 9:00 UTC but not fully recovered under 12:43 UTC on Wednesday, January 25th.  The outage did also impact the Azure Government cloud according to Microsoft.  Microsoft says that it has now blocked highly impactful commands from getting executed on the devices to prevent this in the future and all commands must follow safe change guidelines.  Microsoft plans to publish a full report in a couple of weeks.

A surprise reveal during last week’s Xbox & Bethesda Developer_Direct, Hi-Fi Rush arguably stole the show when it was announced that the game would release following the showcase event—and on Xbox Game Pass, no less. The style-infused rhythm-action game has since taken the gaming world by storm, with more than a few calling it an early contender for 2023’s game of the year. You can see the trailer from the Developer_Direct below.

And now we at OnMSFT deliver our impressions on this surprise Xbox hit.

Kareem Anderson

We’ll start with fellow writer here at OnMSFT Kareem Anderson, who had this to say of Hi-Fi Rush:

I thought it was fun. I loved the art style and the over-the-top story it’s building to.

I didn’t play through the whole thing, but I got in about two hours worth. It’s refreshing to play something other than 100 hr RPG or first person shooter. If I had to put money towards the game, I’d say 35-40 would have been a decent amount for it, but I’m glad it’s on game pass.

I didn’t play with that weird beat tracker on, and I suppose that helped my anxiety with matching the beat. I know some people did and complained about the game. I would recommend that during a first play through to play without it, because it’s still a button smash game at its core but to get those cool combos and animations I could see someone wanting to play with that beat matcher on it.

The other cool thing is how the artwork helps ease the transitions between cut scenes and actual game play.

Also enjoyed the random platforming that appears every now and then. Nice change up.

David Allen

Agreed, I got to say, I didn’t get the time I wanted with the game over the week but I enjoyed it, just pure fun, no K/D ratios to worry with, no yelling in the microphone, I’d buy it if not on Game Pass, it’s pure fun, I have a younger nephew that once taught, jumped right in.

Robert Collins

At this point I’ve completed “Track 4,” so I am nearly halfway through the game. There’s a lot to like about Hi-Fi Rush. I love the game’s crisp cel-shaded visuals. It’s right up there with the best animated TV shows. I also like the story and characters, especially the back and forth between Chai and Peppermint. Their dialogue is definitely worth a few chuckles, and the occasional tension between them is what really drives much of the story so far.

The plot revolves around an evil corporation that is apparently up to something shady with its AI research, specifically using it as a gateway to mind control. It seems like pretty typical stuff as in what you’d find in an anime show geared toward older kids. And I guess that’s probably appropriate for the game.

In terms of the gameplay, honestly I had a little trouble getting into the swing of things in the beginning. I should say that with the caveat that rhythm games are most definitely not my forte. In fact, I downright stink at them, and this game was no exception. For the “rhythmically challenged” like myself, the game can be a tad frustrating, especially in the beginning. I eventually discovered you could just mash buttons in the combat segments and get by. But the game has all kinds of environmental obstacles that you’ll need to contend with via button pressing sequences that are, of course, synced to the beat of the game, and mastering them can be a trail and error process.

I also found the tutorials to be exhausting. The tutorials are never too long in themselves, but they seem to be never-ending. It’s great that the game is constantly introducing new gameplay mechanics to mix things up, and that it takes time to explain them, but less patient gamers may get annoyed with the constant tutorials in this game, even nearing the halfway mark.

It’s nice that the game is always mixing things up between fighting and platforming bits, as well as the occasional puzzle and scripted events like obstacle-strewn rail rides. The game never does one thing long enough for it grow tiring. All in all I’ve enjoyed Hi-Fi Rush so far…to a degree. But not so much as to put it on my Game of the Year list.

And now we turn it over to you

Now that we’ve shared our impressions of Hi-Fi Rush, we want to know what you think of the game. Have you had a chance to try it out for yourself? If so, what are your impressions? Do you think it’s game of the year material? Share your thoughts down in the comments below.

Featured image via Forbes. 

Special thanks to Kareem Anderson and David Allen for contributing their feedback. 

According to a report by Bloomberg, Sony has halved its sales projections for the PlayStation VR2 headset. This was prompted by the low preorders made which didn’t meet the company’s expectations.

As a result, Sony is reportedly reducing its forecast for launch shipments by half transitioning it from 2 million units to 1 million units. The headset price is tagged at $549 and is expected to be launched on February 22.

The price tag and compatibility are reportedly among the top causes why the preorders made were significantly low. However, Sony is reportedly expecting to ship approximately 1.5 million units across the world to customers between March and April this year.

This month, we’ve seen Microsoft’s hardware and Windows licensing business take a hit which translates to a 39% decline though the company was able to it overall revenue income by 2% year over year courtesy of the growth in its cloud business. The same can also be reiterated when it comes to smartphone shipping as it is also at an all-time low.

It will be interesting to see how Sony takes on this issue and how it progresses well after the official launch. Will PlayStation VR2 sales get better? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section.

E3’s “triumphant” return is apparently going to happen without all three major console makers as Xbox, Nintendo and Sony will each be skipping the event this year. What this means is that each of the “big three” will have no official presence at E3 2023, which will be the first live and in-person E3 in four years.

The news comes as a blow to the expo, which is hoping to reclaim its prominence—E3 has historically been the gaming industry’s biggest showcase event. E3 will return to the Los Angeles Convention Center this June.

Xbox recently announced that its annual summer showcase event would would also return to Los Angeles, and it is believed the Xbox Summer Showcase will happen alongside (but not part of) E3. According to Xbox head Phil Spencer,

Well, we pick our time for our showcase specifically so that we’re there. E3 is just, to me, one of the seminal moments of gaming. I love the history of going down to LA, thousands of people there, getting to see great new things…getting to see people in the industry, the fan events that we’ve had. I definitely want that to continue.

The Xbox Summer Showcase announcement came on the heels of last week’s Xbox & Bethesda Developer_Direct event. The first such showcase for Xbox, the Developer_Direct was by all accounts a smashing success, with almost universal praise of its no-fluff format.