Following a massive shakeup within Xbox Studios, Microsoft has announced that the next mainline Halo game will now be developed by Call of Duty maker Activision.
As outlined in an Xbox blog post, Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty announced several updates to the larger studio reset made earlier in the year, including the elimination of 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer. He also added that this now brings the studio “roughly three-quarters of the way through previously announced restructuring”, meaning that there will be more layoffs to come.
Due to the layoffs at Halo Studios, Xbox will now undergo reorganisation, most notable of which being Activision, which will now take over the reins of the Halo franchise, with the studio now in charge of the next Master Chief adventure, led by a new “purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty“. Despite this, a small team from Halo Studios will continue to support the game community and currently released titles.
This handover follows the already complicated history of the Halo franchise, with Microsoft first acquiring the franchise in 2000 when it purchased its original developer, Bungie. The latter would go on to exit Microsoft in 2007 to work on Destiny, with the former subsequently forming a new studio, 343 Industries, to take on the franchise’s more recent entries like Halo 4 (2012), Halo 5: Guardians (2015), and Halo Infinite (2021), although these titles all failed to reach the heights of earlier games.
In 2024, 343 would change its name to Halo Studios, with plans to develop multiple new Halo games using Epic’s Unreal Engine. For now, the only game to be released since the rename is this year’s Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the original 2001 title, so it’s unclear if any of the studio’s plans will be carried forward now that Activision is in charge.
Outside of Activision taking over the Halo franchise, other studio reorganisations include Bethesda, which will now expand its remit to include The Outer Worlds and Avowed developer Obsidian, as it begins work on a new Fallout game. Similarly, Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 is being merged with Forza Horizon studio Playground, and Candy Crush developer King will now comprise of Microsoft Casual Games.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Yonk
