Xbox suggests Halo Infinite doesn’t have an exact date because it’s ‘waiting on other games’

Microsoft’s head of gaming has discussed why Halo Infinite doesn’t yet have a confirmed release date ahead of its planned holiday 2021 release.

Xbox reiterated during this month’s E3 showcase that Infinite—which was originally planned as an Xbox Series X/S launch title in 2020—will be released this holiday, alongside the game’s free-to-play multiplayer experience.

Asked if the game is still coming this year during the latest Dropped Frames podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said “yeah, absolutely,” but that Microsoft was still finalising release timing.

Spencer went on to suggest that Xbox was waiting for other big games to confirm their dates, in order to avoid a clash. That could potentially include fellow FPS Call of Duty: Vanguard, which VGC understands is targeting a November release this year.

“For us, we know kind of our range in the three-to-four-week range,” he said. “We don’t have yet the exact day, there’s some other things with some other game timing that we’re trying to look at.

“We’ll have better clarity over the summer, but this isn’t a months thing, this is just down to a few weeks, and so instead of picking this date and having to move it by a week, which at this point would feel like a fail, we don’t want to do that, let’s wait until we’re really solid on what the date is.”

He added: “But the team’s very committed to holiday, we feel good about that, and the way that Pierre [Hintze] and Joseph [Staten] are running the team, I feel good about the confidence we have in both quality and getting the game done.”

Spencer also discussed the decision to reveal a Starfield release date 17 months ahead of its planned launch. A new trailer for the sci-fi game opened the Xbox E3 showcase and confirmed that the title will be released on November 11, 2022.

“We put that game on a real pedestal, opening the show, largest viewership ever, all of the impressions of people now putting it on something that they want to watch,” he said.

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“[Starfield director] Todd [Howard]’s idea to put a date in the trailer, we talked about that a lot, about whether you do that, calling your shot that far out, but that’s something he wanted to do.”

Speaking about next year’s release slate more generally, Spencer said: “I think 2022 is going to be a pretty amazing year because you’ve just got a lot of stuff that was supposed to be in 2021 that has ended up in 2022.”

He also told Dropped Frames that Fable fans should take confidence from Playground Games’ work on Forza Horizon, and that Xbox would like to “continue to do something” with the Killer Instinct series.