Rumors surrounding Halo 6‘s supposed use of loot boxes have been addressed by 343 Industries, with the company’s Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor calling the story “total bunk.”
Earlier this week a rumor from The Sams Report podcast suggested that Microsoft insiders were “reevaluating” Halo 6‘s take on loot boxes, with host Brad Sams suggesting that the sequel was initially going to follow in the footsteps of EA’s Star Wars Battlefront 2. Sams claimed that Microsoft was reevaluating its stance after consumer reception to Battlefront 2, indicating that Halo 6 may have been set to adopt a similar pay-to-win strategy.
But now 343 Industries has spoken out against these rumors, stating that Halo 6 will not be adopting Battlefront 2‘s loot box system and that its own REQ microtransaction system is “unintrusive as far as these things go.”
The statement from O’Connor, which was posted to the Reset Era forum, reads:
“This is bunk. We’re not reevaluating anything (significant) and “Microsoft” isn’t designing anything for the next game – 343 is. We watched the EA battlefront thing with the curiosity you’d expect – but our current req system is player focused and well liked and unintrusive as far as these things go.
We have made zero announcements about our next projects and continue to work on our next game and technology with player’s needs and interests in mind.
However the story as loosely presented as it is – has no bearing on or relation to any current efforts.
I suppose you could say “company x is evaluating feature you” and always have some grain of truth, but we are neither aping nor adapting an unrelated system from another game.
This follows an equally vague rumor about an issue with our engine, which in fact is counter to significant ongoing improvements and evolution of our tech.
If there were some nugget of truth to both, I’d just ignore it. Development is rife with normal examples of both of these “stories” but in this case there aren’t even notable small examples that this could have been based on.
Certainly in the future we’ll be evolving our systems and tech and maybe these general and vague statements will have brief applicability. But right now? Nah.”
This will be hopeful news for Halo fans, with followers of any multiplayer-focused game now cautious of their inevitable implementation of microtransactions. Brad Sams was previously responsible for leaks pertaining to the Xbox One X and the Xbox Elite controller, though it seems that his apparent insider sources were off-base this time around.
