Updated: Halo Infinite Release Date Revealed At Gamescom 2021
Now, it appears that the Microsoft Store has leaked the official launch date of Halo Infinite, and it's arriving more than a year after it was initially supposed to debut. Italian site Aggiornamenti Lumia found the Microsoft Store listing, which mentions a December 8th launch date. The Verge's Tom Warren later confirmed that date.
Scoop: Halo Infinite (Campaign) | Release Date December 8 https://t.co/5iO4pjLCjA pic.twitter.com/b7efdHp5tm
— Aggiornamenti Lumia (@ALumia_Italia) August 25, 2021
Gamescom 2021 kicks off today in Germany with the "Opening Night Live" broadcast, and it's expected that Microsoft will make the formal announcement about Halo Infinite's launch at that time.
It's been a long wait for anxious Halo gamers, but at least there's now a light at the end of the tunnel. Given that 343 Industries had an extra year of development time under its belt, we hope that the game's graphics will genuinely be "next-gen," which we couldn't say for the original pre-release footage seen last year.
Even with the delay, the devs announced that they still don't have enough time to implement co-op and Forge game modes at launch. So instead, both game modes should launch sometime in 2022, barring any additional hiccups.
"We focused the team for shutdown and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch," said Halo Infinite creative head Joseph Staten. He added that 343 Industries wants to "[make] sure that whatever we ship whenever we ship it, [it] meets the right quality bar across all platforms."
Given the initial Halo Infinite delay and the further delays of co-op and Forge, we must wonder if the game would have been a Cyberpunk 2077-style disaster had the devs pushed through and launched it as planned in November 2020.
Updated 8/25/2021 @ 2:49 pm
It was confirmed today at Gamescom 2021 that Halo Infinite will indeed launch on December 8th, 2021. A new multiplayer trailer was also shown off, which you can view below:
