Halo: Infinite will now launch nearly 12 months after the launch of the Xbox Series X/S in fall 2021

As one of the few exclusive launch titles for the new Xbox Series X/S next-generation consoles, Halo: Infinite was being positioned as a pivotal reason for gamers to jump straight on to Microsoft’s latest gaming platform. Those plans fell apart following Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year when the Halo: Infinite campaign demo was shown to widespread audience disappointment. The game’s developer 343 Industries responded to the justifiable criticism and announced the title would be postponed, but we didn’t know for how long until now.

In a new blog post, 343 Industries has revealed in a blog post that Halo: Infinite will now launch in the fall of 2021, nearly 12 months after the Xbox Series X/S launched. In the blog, 343 Industries’ Ani Shastry, a Development Manager for the Graphics team explains some of the changes:

On the graphics technology front we have made improvements along with fixing bugs that were inherent to some of the techniques, as well as iterating and polishing the features that were still in development.

Some of the key areas of progress include better quality of global illumination, ambient occlusion, shadows, volumetric lighting, sky, and atmosphere. We have also addressed issues with our GPU-driven rendering and texture streaming solution that should mitigate the LOD popping and texture quality issues that were prevalent in the July demo.

There is more to be done, of course, and we are actively partnering with [other] teams to drive the visual quality forward from both an engineering as well as an artistic front.

To help whet the appetite of Halo fans, 343 Industries also showed some still shots of how Halo: Infinite is currently looking. The improvements over the original tech demo are readily apparent and look much more ‘next-gen’ than was previously the case. Details are sharper, the 3D character modelling looks much more life-like and the environments look much richer. Halo Infinite will be a long-time coming for Series X/S owners, but it looks like 343 Industries is going to ensure that the wait will be worth it.