Reminder that is all from “an inside source” and not confirmed in any way. Grain of salt.
TLDW:
- There were NO Halo games in full production at Halo Studios/343i, despite Halo Infinite being nearly 5 years old
- There were some Halo games in the very early concept stages with no major work done, these were: Halo 2 Remake, Halo 3 Remake, Halo 7 and a Halo spin-off game based on the "First Strike" novel
- First Strike takes place between Halo CE and Halo 2, and was intended to connect Halo CE and Halo 2 more effectively
- First Strike was planned as a smaller, quick release game in-between large releases, with only 5 campaign missions, a Firefight mode and was planned to be finished and released by next year
- Halo Studios was considering a strategy of adapting Halo novels into smaller games inbetween the major remakes
- Halo 7 was reportedly still many years away, only a small team was working on the concept and overall vision
- Right before the lay-offs, developers did reportedly present the concept of Halo 7 to Xbox execs, which included Campaign, PvP, PvE and Forge all at launch
- The remaining Halo Studios team wants to also exploring using AI tools to help create smaller Halo projects, while outsourcing development of Halo remakes and potentially still make Halo projects internally
- A source of Rebs claims that Activision has 0 intention to work with Pierre Hintze, the current leader of Halo Studios, Making it unlikely they'll ever work on a new Halo game again
- Reb's sources strongly criticize Pierre Hintze's leadership and Matt Booty's, with a general lack of accountability across Xbox Game Studios sited as a major issue
- They also speculate that Halo Studios will probably be eventually fully shut down
Summary via https://x.com/SynthPotato/status/2103279504806289784?s=20
The CE remake was cool and all, but I think 2 and 3 remakes would have been such a waste, especially if they tried to keep recycling the Reach AI used in the CE remake.
It’s crazy to think five years after the release of Infinite that Halo 7 was barely in early planning. I have seen projections that an Activision Halo likely won’t come until 2030, but Halo 7 by HS would have taken just as long. When they said Infinite was going to be a ten year game, they really meant we wouldn’t get another full Halo game for ten years, oof.
Yea I don't understand how that's even possible. I get that investigating a new engine for future projects take time, but the point of moving to Unreal Engine was to get a functional, modern platform, as well as developers that are familiar with it and don't need to be trained nearly as much. At this point, as a studio you should already have written & storyboarded the next installment at the bare minimum, more likely be halfway through production. What a trainwreck
I personally would have welcomed a Halo 2 remake solely for 4 player co-op. That is the biggest reason I’m thankful for Campaign Evolved.
Halo CE needed a remake because Anniversary was horrible. Not sure if any other sequel would benefit from a remake, especially H2 which already has a very nice remaster.