ShadowCat

Minato Aqua of hololive 2nd Generation will be graduating on August 28th. We thank her for all she has done for us until now and are grateful for the support of fans who have been with her during her activities with us.

A graduation live concert is scheduled for August 28th. Please await further details.

We will continue to provide full support until the time of graduation, and kindly ask for your unwavering support and encouragement for Minato Aqua. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

This is a summary of the long thread from Bathrobe Spartan which you can find here: https://x.com/BathrobeCast/status/1812578845108625769

343 kept losing people in 2023 & 2024. Lead to more outsourcing content. Contracts not being renewed. 50-60 people let go on top of the >100 laid off.

Some roles transferred to MS/Xbox Team instead of being internalized at 343.

343 still relying on contractors, staff are not pleased to see leadership has not learned from the production of Infinite.

Less than 280 employees as of May 2024, with 30% of them related to Game-Content-Production, the rest are business oriented roles & producers.

Not enough positions have been opened to fill the gap from what it was before 2023. ~32 permanent positions opened in 2023 & 2024. Not enough staff to be "Production Ready".

343's budget has been severely impacted and controlled. This is why recruiting took longer and pushed people to leave. Key roles couldn't be replaced in time to finish content left.

Halo Infinite didn't meet its commercial goals but made enough to justify finishing the content already contracted with external studios, but not enough to justify doing more than was started. Quote from an ex employee "No we made money, we made a lot of money. But when I walked into the test bay to test the latest build EVERY FUCKING DAY the guy running it said "why bother, they are gonna hate it anyway" that's demoralizing. I would love to tell you what we worked on, but I can't and won't, not just because of the NDA but because I'm being loyal to the company. I still want to work there. It does bother me people praise Pierre, like, who do you think mandated Forge Maps going forward..."

Partnered forge maps not being high quality is due to to 343 being tied to legal obligations to fulfil the contracts but not enough time left to polish.

As the product did not reach its commercial goal, projection implied it wasn't worth contracting new content outside cosmetics. Meaning no new sandbox additions.

During 2023 & 2024, many employees helped other Xbox studios on their products as most Infinite content was handled by contracted studios.

343 shifting to a new production method, separating "Leading development" and Production. Hiring lead positions to do the concept and pre-production in-house & handing off the production work to other studios, similar to Halo Wars 2. Recruiting less content-creating roles and more lead profiles to test, iterate and validate content and gameplay before working with external studios to go full production. 2 studios are currently partnered to work on 2 separate projects this way. Both still in pre-production. One is a bigger scale PvP oriented project. At least 2 years before any release.

Aim of this new production method is to help produce content for games at a reliable pace and more cost effective. Hopefully won't lead to reproducing what happened with Infinite.

Remaining 343 staff have echoed they feel like 343 Industries isn't as much "The Home of Halo" as it was promised to them. They hope this new method of production will be the best for the franchise.

You can find it here if you want to read the full thing: https://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/677821627

It basically says that "classic style gameplay" doesn't work for the franchise because of the lowering player numbers and "feedback from Reddit". That's already enough to claim it's bs.

"Anything Halo Infinite has done will be ignored and Halo 5 is the blueprint that Project Halo 7 (tentative title) will be built on." Mmm yes let's build a game based on H5, the one that was received so poorly it caused them to go back to classic styled.

All abilities from H5 will be back and includes double jump and wall running. Come on, you're just taking ideas from Titanfall.

This bit is the icing on the cake. "The goal of the campaign's story is to be "the true Halo 6" after the nonsense that was Halo Infinite." I find it hard to believe that someone would think that Infinite was more nonsense than 5.

Rest of it is just prometheans returning but nerfed and no banished but from the first point you can tell this is bs, I just felt like sharing it

Release Date: April 2024

Territories: North America, Central America, South America, Europe (excluding Spain, Portugal, German-, French-, Dutch-, Italian-speaking Europe), Oceania, Middle East, North Africa and CIS

Synopsis: The dysfunctional party is back, but they may be short a member soon ’cause Kazuma is over it. Disillusioned with adventure, he wants to become a monk, but Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness call bull. However, the career dispute gets put on hold when a princess requests to hear all about their tales. Will the taste of fame at the royal castle keep them together or will this mark their farewell tour?

Stream link: https://www.youtube.com/live/1CsySfl3Cds

She won the "VTuber" category

https://hololive.hololivepro.com/en/news/20240221-01-64/

https://holostars.hololivepro.com/en/news/20240201-01-14/

1.6 ended up being a little larger in scope than originally planned. I'm done adding major new content to it now, though, and it's in a bug-fixing and polishing phase until it's ready for release. Thx for your patience. It'll be fun to see everyone play it!

He also replied to a user saying it will absolutely be releasing this year!

https://nitter.net/ConcernedApe/status/1750962107682857258