Halo Infinite. It was announced at E3 2018, shown off again last year with a full reveal of the game’s opening cutscene, and is currently scheduled to release this fall alongside the Xbox Series X, and will be playable on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. But, when will we finally see gameplay? I did a little digging to see if we couldn’t put the puzzle pieces together, and this is what I came up with.
Okay, so obviously hopefully we’ll see some Halo Infinite before E3, otherwise, the Flighting/Beta won’t have nearly as much of an impact as Halo 5’s beta did or give the team enough time to implement important feedback before launch, depending obviously on how much needs to be addressed. Let’s look at 343’s track record for both showing off the title in question, and when we first got a glance at what the game was, be it through some in-engine B-roll, gameplay, or otherwise.
If we follow the track record for Halo 5, the beta was announced at E3 2014, then it launched in December of the same year, lasting from December 29th, 2014 (or earlier for press) until January 18th, 2015. The beta received a prep trailer on August 12th, 2014, which you can see below.
Halo 4 was announced, similarly, at E3 2011. We got a neat little story trailer (with a stand-in/potential recast of Cortana) and a Holiday 2012 release window. We didn’t see or hear anything again until March 5th, 2012 – the first day of GDC 2012. That trailer was our first look at the multiplayer for Halo 4, giving context to its canonical standing, as well as our first look at the Master Chief’s new armor design in-game. You can find that trailer below.
Frank O’Connor had said in the Halo Bulletin (rip) on March 8th, 2012 regarding a Multiplayer Beta:
“While we are testing Halo 4 code, gameplay, and systems at significant scale to get excellent data, input, and feedback, we are focused on polishing and shipping our experience for the duration of the year, and splitting resources to manage and build a beta is not on our schedule.”
So, 343’s Halo games have a history of being announced and shown off within roughly 6 months. Halo Infinite is already a completely different case and is more similar to Halo 5 thus far in that the original announcement came much earlier than when we first saw it, as Halo 5 was first announced as being titled Halo 5: Guardians in an Xbox Wire blog post on May 16th, 2014.
Before it’s release, 343 was praised for the way it handled it’s Multiplayer Beta, having the beta extremely early in development may have seemed more important to them at the time given the more extreme changes they wanted to implement with the Spartan Abilities and Smart-Scope, and obviously, they didn’t see the need for this kind of communal investigation with Halo Infinite.
TL;DR:
All of this to say, in my opinion, we’ll see Halo Infinite either in the weeks leading up to or right around, GDC 2020 which is March 16th-20th. I imagine that they will either use this to strictly show off gameplay and then announce the Beta/Flighting at E3 and shadow drop it then or in the weeks following, OR They’ll show us a trailer at GDC similar to Halo 4’s and use that to announce a Beta/Flighting that’ll begin in late spring/early summer.
Please let me know what you guys think. I know I’m not the only one having panic dreams about finally getting to see it, let alone play it.
Halo Infinite will be released during the Holiday 2020 season and will be playable on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Windows 10.
