UPDATE:
Microsoft claims they are restructuring the leadership team at 343i and Pierre Hintze will take over as the head of 343 effective immediately. Bryan Koski has been made General Manager of the Halo franchise via Windows Central.
“After more than 28 years in gaming at Microsoft, including 15 years leading 343 Industries and Halo through its most ambitious steps forward, Bonnie Ross will be leaving Microsoft and spending more time with her family. We are thankful for her leadership of 343 during which the team launched Halo 4, Halo 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the Halo television series, and Halo Infinite. We wish her all the best. Head of Production Pierre Hintze will become Studio Head effective immediately. The 343 team is hard at work shipping the Winter Update, the biggest Halo Infinite update since launch.”
Original Article:
At 10:00a PST this morning, the founder and head of 343 Industries, the development team currently overseeing the Halo franchise under Microsoft, announced in a Tweet that she is leaving the company.
— Bonnie Ross (@PlutonForEver) September 12, 2022
“While I had hoped to stay with Halo until we released the Winter Update, I am letting you know I will be leaving 343 and attending to a medical issue.
I am incredibly proud of the work everyone at 343 Industries has done with Halo Infinite, the Master Chief Collection, the Halo television series, and so much more. It has been an honor to serve alongside the team for the last 15 years and to be a part of a universe that I love.
Thank you to everyone in the Halo community for your support. Halo’s future is bright. I cannot wait for all of you to experience what we have in store – and to cheer alongside you, as a fan, at the Halo World Championship in October!”
Axios,
Bonnie Ross
While our hearts go out to Bonnie and whatever matter of health in the alleged familial medical issue she claims to be dealing with, this wreaks of public relations cover-up. We wish her and her family the best medically but her stepping down from 343 Industries was a long time coming, considering the state of… quite literally everything she mentioned in her farewell message.
Halo Infinite is in a terrible state with a steadily declining player base and 343i has constantly shit the bed with missing features, aggressive microtransactions, and the world’s longest season (10 friggin’ months). Read all about that and more in this recent post [here].
The Master Chief Collection is finally in a state of quality fans are enjoying. But it took more than seven years to so, as it also had an incredibly rocky launch. The MCC was met with much-deserved criticism for bugs that made the game nearly unplayable on PC, for missing features, and for many other disastrous decisions made by 343i. The fact that it is in a decent state now is not something necessarily worthy of celebration or exuding pride over if you’re from 343i.
The Halo television show, another overwhelming failure, has also been met with heavy criticism for abandoning major plot points and character traits from the source material it is based on while introducing new characters and storylines that do little to move the plot forward. Additionally, the series has become an internet meme sensation for showing the Master Chief not only without his helmet constantly, but completely butt-ass naked, also constantly.
If you are looking for any evidence that the Halo franchise is in a state of disarray from literally every angle, you need to look no further than the online forums or on Reddit to see that fans are furious and feel duped. And while no one single person can be blamed for this, Bonnie Ross is at the head of it all and the one who signed on these boneheaded decisions that have turned Halo into a rather lackluster franchise ever since 343 took over from Bungie all those years ago.
Look, we get it. It’s hard to run a billion-dollar franchise. But when you constantly screw things up and cause the franchise to take a nosedive one game after another, and then completely f*ck up a television series that should have been a total grand slam homerun, maybe it’s best for everyone if you just leave quietly. Even if that means using a “family medical issue” as the reason behind it.
We hope Bonnie and her family are well in health but from a business perspective, we say good riddance as Bonnie has done nothing but drag the Halo name through the gutter since she and 343 took over.
