Here Are All The Post-Launch Plans For Halo Infinite So Far

When gathering the amount of anticipation that is circulating for Halo Infinite, it is otherworldly when realizing that the game is officially launching this month. In late November, 343 Industries announced that the game went gold – solidifying the project is shipping on December 8th. But while the team has much planned for the full release come this Wednesday, the game studio has much planned well beyond the release date.

So far, post-launch plans for the game includes periodic seasons that are set to arrive for the multiplayer portion of Halo Infinite. The contents while light in terms of each season offering will also provide more for other segments of the game. In an update back in August, both co-op campaign & Forge Mode were confirmed to arrive after the official release. A later statement verifies that the decision has been delayed with Season 2 coming with co-op campaign in May 2022 while late 2022 is the earliest projection for Season 3 and Forge Mode.

With the Halo Infinite Multiplayer Beta going live during the Xbox Anniversary Celebration livestream nearly three weeks ago now, 343 Industries laid out some fabric to cut out planned content for Halo Infinite as it comes. That includes add-ons scheduled for late 2021 and leading into 2022.

The first event ‘Fracture: Tenrai’ already arrived, however, 343 Industries confirmed it will take many forms across the duration of Season 1. As for other timed events, Winter Contingency is the next one on the list. Currently, the event is suspected to land before Christmas this year. Later on, there is both Cyber Showdown and Tactical Ops that 343 has in mind for Halo Infinite as well.

In addition to the brief layout from the team, Halo Community Managery John Junyszek shared on Twitter that beloved game modes for Halo Infinite are coming: Fiesta, SWAT, and Free-for-All. All are promised to ship before the end of 2021. Noted, SWAT has been renamed to ‘Tactical Slayer’ which likely nods to the Tactical Ops event coming before the year’s end as well.

Junyszek adds, “Our goal for Events is to try new modes prior to adding to playlists. We’ll monitor playlist health after the 3 additions above and adjust our offering if needed, but we’re excited to make these updates before the holidays.” He also injects that a social playlist is in the works with the most variation in game modes, but that is likely to come after the holiday he explains.

Elsewhere in a long thread on Reddit, Halo Community Director Brian Jarrard explains the reasoning for the delay in response to lacking game modes. While it is not as simple as turning it on he tells, it is also said there are plans for a robust UI in the works that introduces requested modes/playlists/ But, he shares the team will add the playlist with a primitive UI until the planned one is ready to launch.

The launch playlists were setup as they were to take a measured approach. We have UI limitations with the game right now in the way and number of playlists that are exposed. We have complex and not-ideal progression and challenge systems intertwined in playlists and modes that are not necessarily trivial to de-couple and change. (yes the entire challenge/progression system needs a lot of work – something the team is acutely aware of and prioritizing).

The team’s plans for a Slayer playlist, I think, are more robust than what might ‘suffice’ for an interim solution. I love the ideas and some of the variants they’re working on – those all require tuning and most importantly – testing. QA is a huge dependency and it’s a critical part of the development pipeline that has been running nonstop for months to launch this game.

“We are re-evaluating what it would take to potentially just start with a ‘vanilla Slayer’ playlist as a shorter term addition until the more robust offering is ready. I think the main hurdle that needs to be addressed and may require more time than is feasible before the holiday break is the knock on effect to challenges and needing to also re-assess ‘quick play’ and what that becomes.

“Historically, a Slayer only playlist and an Objective only playlist has always resulted in the Obj playlist quickly becoming unhealthy – but maybe we inevitably have no choice but to go down that route until more robust systems are available (note I am not a MP or systems designer).” 

Despite the questioning decision to ship Halo Infinite Multiplayer as a free-to-play model, it has proven to be effective so far. Since the inception of the Multiplayer Beta, the game has reached more than 200K users on Steam that makes a new milestone for Xbox Game Studios. Additionally, the game also overtook Battlefield 2042 concurrent users on the platform as well as being the most played on Xbox then. You can read the full report by heading here.

What are you most excited for about Halo Infinite post-launch plans so far?

Halo Infinite is set to release on December 8, 2021 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.