Summary
- An insider hints at a potential new Halo game reveal this year.
- If true, the reveal is unlikely to happen at the Xbox Developer Direct on January 23.
Xbox could reveal a new Halo game at some point this year, according to an industry insider. Sentiment surrounding Xbox’s major sci-fi FPS franchise Halo has been rocky following the release of Halo Infinite in 2021. 343 Industries initially struggled to find its footing with being able to provide timely updates to its active Halo Infinite playerbase. However, its output has improved in more recent seasons, but that hasn’t kept fans from wondering about what’s next for Halo.
This past October marked a huge shift for Xbox’s Halo team, 343 Industries. The studio announced that it has changed its name to Halo Studios, confirming that its sole focus will be the Halo franchise, as it’s always been. In conjunction with the studio’s name change, Halo Studios also revealed that it’s moving away from its Slipspace Engine, which was created for Halo Infinite, and will instead use Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 for all future Halo projects.
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Now, it seems Halo Studios is firing on all cylinders following its engine swap. Industry insider Rebs Gaming posted a video on YouTube talking about a new Xbox LinkedIn post that mentions Halo Studios’ expanded playtesting setup. As part of the post, Halo Studios’ Playtest Manager Susan Bunch says “When the Project Foundry Team was working on Unreal explorations, we set up a playtest session for the artists and designers to come in and play similar maps in production.” It’s this mention of maps that are in active production that’s led Rebs Gaming to believe a new Halo announcement could be coming sooner rather than later.
New Halo Game Reveal Could Happen in 2025, According to Insider
It’s been known that Halo Infinite‘s Slipspace engine took a long time to build and was the likely culprit of there being such a large gap between Halo 5: Guardians, which was released in 2015, and Halo Infinite, which was released in 2021. Using Unreal Engine 5 may allow for Halo Studios to put out new Halo games more frequently than in the past, and have an easier time adding new content to its multiplayer suites. There’s also the heavily rumored Halo: Combat Evolved remake that may still be on the table. If this next Halo game really is turning around this quickly since switching to Unreal, and a 2025 reveal turns out to be true, it could be a smaller-scoped spin-off title, and Halo Studios could have something bigger planned down the road.
If a new Halo game was to be revealed this year, it would mean that the game would likely be due out in 2026, 2027, or later depending on its scope. As for when a reveal might occur, Xbox’s imminent Developer Direct, which goes live next week, doesn’t seem likely with three of the four games already confirmed, and the fourth game heavily rumored to be a Japanese IP. Instead, Xbox’s annual Summer Game Fest showcase in June would be the right place for Xbox to unveil its next Halo title, though this 2025 Halo reveal is just a rumor.
