Halo Infinite Dev Responds To Xbox One Version Cancellation Rumors

Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries has responded to recent rumors that claimed the studio was abandoning the Xbox One version of the sci-fi shooter and delaying the game to 2022. That's a bunch of baloney, community manager John Junyszek said on social media--you can still expect Halo Infinite to release in 2021 for all previously announced platforms, including Xbox One.

"We're seeing lots of fake 'leaks' out there, so please don't believe everything you read," he said on Twitter. "There are no plans to change our 2021 release or the devices and platforms we'll be supporting. We're building Halo Infinite to be the best it can be on each device/platform."

Halo Infinite is in development for Xbox Series X, the standard Xbox One, and PC. Citing no evidence, people online have claimed that Halo Infinite's Xbox One edition would be "held back" due to the power of the Xbox One being less than the Series X.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer believes "held back" is a term used by people who have too much time on their hands.

"Frankly, held back is a meme that gets created by people who are too caught up in device competition," Spencer said in an interview. "I just look at Windows. It's almost certain if the developer is building a Windows version of their game, then the most powerful and highest fidelity version is the PC version. You can even see that with some of our first-party console games going to PC, even from our competitors, that the richest version is the PC version. Yet the PC ecosystem is the most diverse when it comes to hardware, when you think about the CPUs and GPUs from years ago that are there."

343 recently delayed Halo Infinite from holiday 2020 to an unspecified date in 2021. The company pushed the game to next year due in part to development complications related to COVID-19 and the impact of working from home.

This is not the first rumor that 343 has responded to in recent weeks. The company also shot down speculation that Microsoft was planning to launch Halo Infinite's multiplayer and campaign modes separately.

The multiplayer portion of the game will be free-to-play, and that could be a very big deal for the future of Halo.