Even if Halo stayed with its original developers at HS/343 Industries, a new game would still be years away from release.
Xbox recently made some big changes to its game dev teams and the franchises that they're responsible for. In an odd twist of fate, Activision will now make the next Halo game. Xbox has in turn mostly shuttered Halo Studios, the team responsible for Halo, relegating HS' ranks to more of a support studio that will handle socials, community features, and bug fixes for existing games.
Popular Now: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 3DS port is getting closer to release as New 3DS performance improvesNew reports from The Verge's Tom Warren shed more light on the Halo situation. According to Warren's sources, the existing Halo Studios team was years away from releasing the next Halo game.
Specifics on the project remain unknown because the plans seemed to be in flux; however, reports from Rebs Gaming say that Halo 7 was still in concept phases at Halo Studios and was years from launch. There were other possibilities including Halo 2 and Halo 3 remakes; the latter's 20th anniversary will be celebrated next year in 2027.
Halo's traditional hurdles at HS included things like problematic leadership, complicated mandates from above, the IP-related tie-ins (Halo is more than just a game to Xbox, complete with transmedia like books, comics, and even a TV show), and the various technical issues related to Halo's modern Frankenstein games engine, which is a modified version of Bungie's old Halo creation tools.
Activision says that it intends to take the responsibility of Halo very seriously, and wants to make the best Halo game in the entire franchise.
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A team is being assembled at the publisher and among them could be old-school Halo veterans--original Master Chief creator Marcus Lehto has expressed an interest in returning to the franchise.
