343 Industries is an American video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Redmond, Washington. Headed by Bonnie Ross, the studio is responsible for the Halo series of military science fiction games, originally created and produced by Bungie, and is the developer of the Slipspace Engine. Named after the Halo character 343 Guilty Spark, the studio was established in 2007 after the departure of Bungie. After co-developing downloadable content for ', Bungie's final Halo game, 343 Industries released ' and Halo 4 to critical and commercial success – the latter starting the studio's "Reclaimer Saga" of the mainline games.
History
Formation
343 Industries was founded by Bonnie Ross in 2007, after the former Halo studio, Bungie, separated from Microsoft. It was named after Halo character 343 Guilty Spark. Bungie continued making Halo games until in 2010.
Development
In July 2009, it was announced that 343 Industries was working on a seven-part Haloanime series called Halo Legends. Later that year the studio created Halo Waypoint, a downloadable application that tracks a user's Halo accomplishments. 343i also increased staff for Halo development, recruiting 20 staff from the now defunct Pandemic Studios. 343i also developed Halo: Reachs second and third map packs, entitled "Defiant" and "Anniversary" respectively, in conjunction with Certain Affinity. The company was responsible for the remastered version of ', titled ', which was released on November 15, 2011, to celebrate the 10th year since the release of first franchise installment on November 15, 2001. Following Bungie's departure from Microsoft in 2007, 343 Industries was eventually given complete control of the Halo franchise including servers and data on March 31, 2012. The studio's development of Halo 4, which began in 2009, was completed in September. It was released on November 6, 2012, as the first title of a new Halo Reclaimer Trilogy which will include at least two more installments over the years. At E3 2013, Microsoft and 343i announced the next "Halo" installment set for release on the Xbox One. Shortly after the announcement, the Reclaimer Trilogy was confirmed by Microsoft Studioscorporate vice-presidentPhil Spencer to be expanded into a Reclaimer Saga. The following year at E3 2014, the official title was revealed as "Halo 5: Guardians" along with plans for its release on October 27, 2015. Microsoft, in a contract with Mega Bloks, is in conjunction with 343i to manufacture a new line of toys and other memorabilia for the upcoming Halo saga. was released on October 27, 2015, with semi-exclusive content to those who purchased select Mega Bloks sets. 343 Industries has since released free monthly content updates since Halo 5's launch. At E3 2018, Microsoft Studios and 343 Industries announced the next Halo game, titled Halo Infinite, which is currently scheduled to launch in holiday 2020 for Xbox One and Windows PCs, in addition to being a launch title for the next Xbox console, the Xbox Series X, previously known under the code nameProject Scarlett. Infinite will be the first game to be developed using 343's in-house Slipspace Engine.
