GAMES: Halo Infinite — Xbox boss discusses high-level staff departures.

Xbox Game Stu­dios boss Matt Booty has com­ment­ed on the many changes to senior lead­er­ship on the Halo Infi­nite devel­op­ment team, say­ing turnover is nat­ur­al in an area like game devel­op­ment. He also sug­gest­ed that some of the devel­op­ers who left the team might have had a vision for Halo Infi­nite that went against what oth­ers wanted.

Speak­ing to The New York Times, Booty dis­cussed the depar­tures of Cre­ative Direc­tor Tim Lon­go and Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er Mary Olson, as well as for­mer FPS Stu­dio Head Chris Lee.

“There will always be a change of lead­er­ship — it’s inevitable,” Booty said. He added that some­times “the momen­tum of the project goes one way, and this per­son has a vision that goes the oth­er way.”

Booty’s com­men­tary is intrigu­ing, but it does­n’t include details of a dif­fer­ent direc­tion for Halo Infi­nite that might have been con­sid­ered dur­ing devel­op­ment. GameSpot has fol­lowed up with Microsoft to try to get more details.

Microsoft vet­er­an Joseph Stat­en stepped in to lead the Halo Infi­nite devel­op­ment team after Lee left. After Lee left, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said he believed rev­enue in a cre­ative field like game devel­op­ment was actu­al­ly a good thing. “I don’t have any par­tic­u­lar con­cerns about 343. I actu­al­ly think in the long run turnover is a healthy thing because we want peo­ple who are real­ly moti­vat­ed by the things they’re work­ing on,” said Spencer.

The Halo Infi­nite Mul­ti­play­er Beta released on Novem­ber 15th and has been received very pos­i­tive­ly so far. The cam­paign is slat­ed for release on Decem­ber 8 and will be avail­able on Game Pass.