With battle royale moving from becoming its own standalone thing, and being added to every popular multiplayer game – Call of Duty, for example, will be adding battle royale mode this Fall, as will Battlefield shortly after its launch – one might expect every shooter to include one going forward just to maintain some parity.
However, 343 Industries – the folks who bring us Halo – are not interested in doing that for now. In a recent Halo stream on Mixer, Jeff Easterling, a writer at 343, shot down the idea of there being a battle royale mode in Halo, including the upcoming Halo Infinite, pretty conclusively.
“I’ll tell you right now, the only BR we’re interested in is Battle Rifle. The original BR. So, calm yourself,” he said.
While his comments sound like they were made jokingly, I do think there is an element of truth to them if you consider where Infinite currently is in its development cycle- it’s presumably a few years away from release, and it’s hard to even tell if battle royale will be as big of a deal by the time it is out. We have previously seen many trends in multiplayer gaming being short lived fads falling by the wayside.
For 343 Industries, who presumably want the new Halo game to win back lapsed fans, diverting resources to a new mode Halo has never been known for, one that might not even be popular by the time the game is out, wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
Halo: Infinite was announced at E3 last month, without any release window.