There was a rumor floating around online that 343 Industries was looking into adding a loot box system into its next game which will probably be Halo 6. However, the head for the studio has spoken out about the topic and it sounds like the rumor has now been debunked.
Halo series franchise director, Frank O’Connor, posted a statement on the rumor inside the Reset Era forums. You can read what he said down below.
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.
Loot boxes became a huge controversy thanks to EA adding them into Star Wars Battlefront 2. Unlike other games, the loot boxes were pay to win in the game’s multiplayer mode. The reaction was fierce so EA had to temporarily remove pay-to-win style loot boxes. For two months now, the pay-to-win model in Battlefront 2 has yet to return. For the rest of 2018, game publishers and developers will have to tread lightly when it comes to loot boxes.
