343 Industries slows down Halo Infinite support while "working on brand new projects" - right after the FPS' best (and last) season ever

Developer 343 Industries has teased future plans for its iconic shooter series, just as it announced that support on Halo Infinite would be somewhat slowing down.

Halo Infinite, in my opinion, finally became the full FPS package that it promised at launch last month and stood shoulder to shoulder with its other, older Halo siblings in terms of feature parity and overall shoot-punch-boom fun. Season 5 introduced an excellent PvE mode, a host of fancy new maps, fresh equipment, and more - but it's also the divisive game's very last season.

In last night's community livestream, 343 Industries announced that Halo Infinite would be ditching seasonal cycles and adopting the smaller "content updates" - the first of which is dropping on January 30 - that Halo: Master Chief Collection enjoyed for a while. Instead, the shooter will now have smaller "Operations" run from four to six weeks with an accompanying 20-tier battle pass each time. 

"We have a dedicated team working on Halo Infinite, continuing to deliver going forward," the team revealed. The game is definitely not going into maintenance mode or anything similar anytime soon, but the studio is putting more power in the hands of players with plans to further flesh out the custom games editor, Forge. The community has already hammered out some wild creations with the tool, creating Pokemon parodies, miniature MOBAs, and giant Kaiju fights - and I wouldn't scoff at seeing more.

"But we also have additional teams now, accelerating towards the future, working on brand new projects," the team also stated. "We are also growing and have exciting things for the future." It certainly sounds like the team is gearing up work on the next mainline Halo game, while slowly dwindling support on Infinite. 

Games can't and shouldn't be around forever, but hopefully studio layoffs aren't paving the way for another bumpy road to release for the team. Fingers crossed. 

See where Halo Infinite places in our top ten Halo games of all time