Microsoft has two job advertisements for positions to join the developer 343 industries to work on future Halo projects. The positions require that the potential-employees have previous experience with massively multiplayer online game development.
According to a report by GameSpot, the two job listings at 343 Industries were posted Nov. 19, for software development engineers who will work on "building the next generation of backend services to power Halo 4 and our new game saga."
GameSpot also notes that the two open positions follow additional job listings that were posted last week and suggest that 343 Industries is assembling a staff for the secretive "incubation projects." GameSpot reached out for a comment from a Microsoft representative, but one was not immediately available.
This would not be the first time that Microsoft has tried to take the Halo Universe into another gaming genre. In 2009, Microsoft alongside Ensemble Studios released Halo Wars, a real-time strategy video game.
The game received generally positive reviews and the game was the best selling console real-time strategy game to date. According to NPD Group's March sales figures, Halo Wars was the third best-selling game in the market during its first month of release. But Microsoft disbanded the studio before the game was officially released.
The job listing are not surprising as Microsoft has recently talked about the possibility of creating Halo games in different genres. In a recent interview with GameSpot, Halo 4's Executive producer Kiki Wolfkill said that 343 Industries has a always had big vision for the Halo universe and the developer would consider moving outside the FPS genre to tell a certain story.
"I think we'd look at what the most interesting genre, medium, delivery mechanism is to tell a certain story, and if it moves the IP forward in an interesting way, we'll do it," Wolfkill said. "The first-person shooter is the best place to tell one kind of story but as you can see from Forward Unto Dawn and stuff like that, there are other parts of the story that are interesting to tell in different ways."
Halo 4 is now available as of Nov. 6 for the Xbox 360. You can read our review of the game here. If you want to more about how 343 Industries has attempted to make Halo 4 feel familiar and brand new at the same time, read more here. No more Master Chief in future Halo games? Maybe read about it here. Learn how you can earn free Microsoft points by playing Halo 4's multiplayer mode here.
Have you seen Microsoft's "Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn?" The new web series consist of five web segments. Here are all the segments; Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4 and Episode 5.
Watch Spartan Ops episode 3's trailer below and comment on your experiences with the new mode or anything about Halo 4 in general.
