Joseph Staten, who was responsible for the production of the Halo franchise, is leaving Microsoft. This news was reported by IGN and was later confirmed by Joseph himself on Twitter. Microsoft said that they were grateful to him for all his work. Joseph also expressed his gratitude towards his colleagues at Xbox for their support as he took this new path in his life.
Joe Staten was a part of Bungie (the game studio) for some years. He worked on three Halo games and then joined Destiny as co-creative director. Then in 2014, he moved to Microsoft and became Creative Director. In 2020, he shifted to 343 Industries too. There has been a lot of uncertainty with 343 and the future of Halo recently – they had to cut down 95 jobs at the same time Joe was reassigned to the Xbox Publishing Division. Furthermore, Bloomberg said that 343 had started from scratch on a new Halo game due to difficulty in keeping people interested in Infinite.