Microsoft and 343 Industries Working on Unannounced AAA Halo Game With Online Features

Giuseppe Nelva January 12, 2014 3:13 PM EST

We all know that 343 Industries is working on the new main chapter of the Halo series, but according to a new career opportunity ad seeking a Online and Connected Experience Engineer, they may also be working on another one.

Below you can see an excerpt of the ad, with the relevant parts underlined.

343 Industries is searching for a rock star engineer to join the team developing a new experience in the Halo universe. Work on one of the most exciting and creative intellectual properties in the industry; we are gathering an incredible team to help drive the future of Halo. We are looking for a talented software developer with the skills and drive to help us deliver the online and connected features of a AAA game title. As a candidate, you should work well in a highly collaborative, cross-group role, should be able to make appropriate engineering decisions to meet requirements and mitigate issues, and should be passionate about delivering a quality experience and overall product. RESPONSIBILITIES:

As an online and connected experiences developer, you will collaborate with designers, services developers, and other developers to deliver polished code that powers the online and connected features of the game. You will author design specs, write prototype code, extend existing code, and implement new code. You will fix bugs and solve issues in code and design. You will collaborate to resolve problems with dependent systems. QUALIFICATIONS/SKILLS:

-Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent

-At least 5 years of professional C++ experience

–Experience with services development (as a consumer of service features from client code)

-Strong communication and problem-solving skills

–Experience shipping a current generation AAA game title

From the post we learn that the “new experience” should be an AAA game and will have prominent online features. Some of it might also be provided in the form of a “service,” involving Microtransactions, but that wording is vague and could mean quite a few different things.

The required experience on current generation consoles might hint to the possibility of the game landing on Xbox 360, but even here it might just mean that having worked on current gen consoles is enough to work on a Xbox One project considering how few developers actually worked on the new generation on consoles so far.

This also casts an interesting doubt on the assumption that the concept artwork teased a few days ago was from Halo 5. 343 Industries’ wording on it was quite vague:

In closing, I will leave you with this image from Sparth – an early exploration of a new location that features prominently in a little game project we’re tinkering with….

While many (including us) interpreted it as tongue in cheek, hinting at the next main chapter of the Halo franchise, the “little game project we’re tinkering with” might very well be something else.

Of course we should take this with the proverbial grain of salt until an official announcement is made, but this should definitely pique the curiosity of Halo fans waiting to play more of the beloved science fiction franchise.