New Halo games are likely going to be developed by developers other than 343 Industries. Halo is arguably the most important brand for Xbox and sadly, it has sort of lost a bit of its luster in the last few years. Bungie kickstarted the series for the original Xbox and continued it all the way up until 2010 with Halo: Reach, the developer's fifth Halo game. It passed the torch to 343 Industries which went on to make Halo 4, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite, while all three games have reviewed fairly well, they've also been met with heavy amounts of criticism for their stories, changes to gameplay, and poor post-launch support.

With that said, 343 Industries suffered some layoffs earlier this year and many have feared for the future of Halo. In a new interview with Axios, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty confirmed 343 Industries will continue to work on Halo games going forward, but the door is being opened to allow other studios the ability to dabble in that sandbox as well. Although no specific studios were named for future Halo games, Microsoft owns a wealth of studios and is currently about to potentially acquire one of the biggest publishers in gaming: Activision. The publisher owns Call of Duty and all of the associated developers with that franchise, so naturally, Axios inquired about the chance of a new Halo game from the Call of Duty teams. Booty noted that is a possibility, but it would have to be something dictated by the developers themselves and not an order/initiative created by Xbox executives.

As of right now, it remains to be seen what such a thing could look like. Halo is probably in need of some fresh blood and some have already suggested other developers like id Software. It's currently up in the air whether Microsoft will even gain ownership over Activision as there's a lot of legal drama that needs to be sorted out.



Posted: Jun 20, 2023 12:23 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/new-halo-games-call-of-duty-teams-xbox/