Tim Longo, creative director for the upcoming Halo Infinite, left developer 343 Industries this week, Kotaku has learned. It’s part of a leadership shakeup that arrives late in the development of the next Halo game, which is scheduled for release in fall 2020.
Longo, an industry veteran who also served as creative director for Halo 5, had moved to a different role a few weeks ago, according to two people familiar with goings-on at 343. This week, he left the company entirely.
When reached by Kotaku, Microsoft confirmed Longo’s departure and sent over the following statement:
Roles and responsibilities of various team members regularly evolve to meet the needs of a game, throughout development. We have recently had two changes to the Halo Infinite development team. Our Executive Producer, Mary Olson will now take charge of the Campaign team on Halo Infinite as the Lead Producer, utilizing her many years of experience at 343 to help craft a great campaign for fans.
Additionally, Tim Longo has recently departed our team and we are truly thankful for his many contributions to our games, our studio and the Halo universe. We wish Tim nothing but the best in his future endeavors.
The overall creative vision and production of the game remains led by Chris Lee, Studio Head of Halo Infinite.
We have a world-class team building Halo Infinite and the overwhelming positive response by fans has us energized, more than ever, to create the best Halo game to date, alongside Project Scarlett in holiday 2020. These changes have no impact to the release date for Halo Infinite.
In addition to releasing on Xbox One and PC, Halo Infinite will be a launch game for the next-generation Xbox, which is codenamed Scarlett. It’s envisioned as a “spiritual reboot” for the series, according to 343 studio head Bonnie Ross. The studio hasn’t shown any actual gameplay just yet, but put out a cinematic trailer featuring protagonist Master Chief at E3 of this year.
First announced at E3 2018, Halo Infinite is the third mainline entry in the series to be developed by 343, which took over the franchise when original Halo developer Bungie split back in 2007.
Additional reporting by Stephen Totilo.