Halo Studios, responsible for the acclaimed science fiction franchise, may adopt a new production model that prioritizes the hiring of external teams. According to information released by expert Rebs Gaming, there are indications that Microsoft will invest significantly in third-party companies for future releases, a strategy that is corroborated when analyzing the recent history of Halo: Campaign Evolved.
The remake of Halo: Campaign Evolved, for example, involved an impressive 15 different companies in its development. The list of collaborators includes names such as FX–Chamber, Arrival, Devoted Studios, Digic and Keywords Studios. An interesting detail is the mention of Abstraction, whose professionals are mentioned in the acknowledgments, although the company does not appear directly in the main credits.
Abstraction’s presence in the acknowledgments is not random. Past reports indicated that the studio carried out a substantial part of the project to transpose Halo: Campaign Evolved from the Blam platform to the modern Unreal Engine 5. However, this step was abandoned, and Halo Studios opted to restart the entire adaptation process, justifying Abstraction’s absence from the game’s formal list of developers.
Possible collaboration between Call of Duty studio and Halo franchise
The use of outsourcing was not limited to Halo: Campaign Evolved. Project Ekur, a supposed multiplayer project that would have been discontinued, also had the collaboration of external teams under the supervision of Halo Studios. One of the sources close to Rebs Gaming revealed that Ekur used the outsourcing system on an unprecedented scale for the Halo series.
Still looking to the future, Rebs Gaming suggests an unconventional partnership if it comes to fruition: Halo Studios could establish closer cooperation with Activision. Sources indicate that Sledgehammer Games, recognized for its work on the Call of Duty series, may be involved in the development of a new title for the Halo saga.
The same information warns that this initiative is in a preliminary stage. Even so, Activision would have advanced from discussions to creating a prototype for a new game in the Halo franchise. This initial model was demonstrated to the company’s management in June and, according to the description, only presented rudimentary functionalities, such as the basic movement of a character around the environment.
The prototype was discontinued in July. However, stopping a project in its initial phase does not imply the exclusion of Activision from future participation in the franchise. Based on this data, Rebs Gaming inferred that Halo Studios is likely to make outsourcing the main pillar of its development process going forward.
Implementing this approach could bring benefits, such as incorporating new creative visions into the franchise across multiple teams, something that could potentially result in an increase in the frequency of new releases in the coming years.
