When a teen first met Master Chief and crushed a grunt in 2007, few could have guessed Activision would end up making the next Halo game. Now that it has happened, the obvious question on fans’ minds is what comes next.
A twist in the announcement has the community worried. The Call of Duty publisher is entering a franchise that has spent 25 years building a vast, tangled universe of ancient artifacts and alien races. Some players fear Activision will treat that history the way Disney treated Star Wars — a full reset that discards everything built before. Others want a reboot, but only back to Halo 3. Nobody wants to lose the clean slate Halo Infinite finally offered.
Layoffs at Xbox Studios
This week, Matt Booty, who runs Xbox Studios, said the company is cutting 268 positions at Halo Studios and its other first-party studios, along with jobs in the XGS management and central functions layer. He also said more reductions, amounting to 1,600, are expected later this year, on top of the 1,600 staff let go this summer.
The shake-up also reshuffled several studios. Obsidian is now part of Bethesda, and Halo, Rare, and World’s Edge are now part of Activision. It is a dramatic shift for a franchise that was once Xbox’s golden goose, and fans are conflicted about what it means for the future of the iconic sci-fi shooter series.
The Official Statement
The company confirmed the change through a statement, though it did not offer many specifics. “Activision will also be developing the next Halo title, led by a new, purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty. A small team at Halo Studios will continue supporting the Halo community and games in-market.”
The closing statement is the most important point. The new team operates apart from Call of Duty, which indicates Activision views Halo as its own separate property. It remains uncertain whether the two series will share creative guidance or stay entirely independent. What is certain is that the studio setup has changed greatly, and the staff who worked on Halo for years are now part of a smaller support group instead of serving as the lead developers.
The Lore Debate
Fans fear that twenty-five years of storytelling could be thrown away if Activision reboots the story and starts over. A rich, sprawling universe has been built up through decades of lore, and there is real worry that it might be discarded. One Redditor summed up that fear directly: “That would be another terrible idea in a string of terrible ideas.”.
@NakaiCanon, who goes by Nakai Targaryen on X, expressed a related concern. “Honestly that’s my biggest fear. I fear that they’ll just do a general reset on Halo’s established lore.” She added, “If that happens, I’m out.”
Some people take a harsher approach. A fan wrote, “Frankly I’m out if they DON’T do a semi-reboot and axe ALL of 343’s lore. There is zero future for any stories which share a continuity with Halo 4, 5, and Infinite.”
@Welfare_JBP, known as John Welfare, put forward a specific idea. It involves Activision starting over Halo at a point right after Halo 3, leaving out any Forerunner background. Instead, the story would center on humanity working to rebuild while certain regions of the galaxy fight against that effort.
The duality of main, I guess?
Halo Fest Seattle in Doubt
A separate concern surrounds the Halo Fest Seattle event. It was planned as a celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary, bringing together fans for a live gathering in December. However, most of Halo Studios has now been cut down, and the layoff announcement came alongside the restructuring. That leaves the community questioning whether the event will still take place.
Xbox has not yet responded to my request for comment, so I am still waiting on a reply. In the meantime, the guessing about what is happening continues.
Kostich’s Vague Promise
In a statement given to Kotaku, Rob Kostich, president of Activision, spoke about the situation. He aimed to reassure people while remaining somewhat unclear on specifics. The company’s stated goal is to “make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place.”.
That sounds like whatever studio ends up taking over the series hasn’t even been assembled yet, so discussions about lore probably won’t happen for quite some time. The statement is certainly vague enough that things could go either way. The company has not committed to preserving existing lore, nor has it promised a reboot.
The Case Against a Reset
A full lore reboot faces a simple counter-argument: there remains vast, unexplored material in the novels that is ready for a video game adaptation, much like Halo Reach. The books already contain a rich tapestry of events and characters that could easily supply content for a new game without requiring a fresh start.
A lot of fans think the period after Bungie was a real mess. Following the story grew hard unless you read every single Halo book, and that might have made it hard for a developer to figure out where to go next. Still, Halo Infinite wrapped up with a fresh start of a kind. Cortana 1.0 is gone, a new danger looms ahead, and the whole business about space magic appears to be forgotten.
Why start from scratch, again?
What Fans Want
There is disagreement within the group, and it has grown into a noisy argument. The opposing views are laid out below.
- Preserve the current lore — keep the established continuity intact.
- Reboot to Halo 3 — discard everything after that point, including the Forerunner lore.
- Full reset — discard everything, including the novels and the clean slate of Halo Infinite.
- No reboot at all — let the new team build on the existing foundation.
The stakes are clear on both sides. Devotees who have spent hundreds of hours inside the story do not want it wiped away. Gamers who found the later games hard to follow might be glad for a new beginning. A compromise approach — a partial reboot that keeps the main storyline whole — would cause the least trouble, though it calls for careful management.
The Wait Ahead
Until then, waiting is all anyone can do. Xbox has given no word on when the new team will come together, who will lead it, or where its creative direction will point. The company has pledged a great game, yet a promise carries little weight when the franchise’s future hangs in the balance.
The soldiers are still out there, and the Chief is still engaged in battle. It is not yet known whether he will fight with the same weapons he has always carried, or with an entirely new set.
Source material: “As Halo goes to Activision, fans are worried about this year's Halo Fest and a potential lore reboot from the Call of Duty publisher,” Eurogamer.
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