The ironic thing is you could pass the IP over to a passionate indie dev and they’d be more likely to churn out “the greatest Halo game ever” than any AAA studio.

Part of Halo CE failing is boycott, I was interested until MSFT did all their shenanigans and cost people their livelihoods.

Halo used to be what everyone wanted (both to play and dethrone), but now it's sitting in the corner eating glue. Moving it under Activision is certainly an extreme measure, but if it means everyone who touched on it in the past 15 years can't anymore, I'm listening.

Well now activision gets to make Call of Halo so we’ll see how that goes!

What you described with the "might as well give up" is literally the idea behind Project Helix. It's a PC branded as Xbox with some compatibility layers glued in.

Xbox now is a game studio, not a console manufacturer. Look at them through that lens. Doom, Halo, Overwatch, Fallout, whatever else, whether you are into them or not, they own a lot of franchises and those are their core now.

I find modern Windows very frustrating. The Xbox lets you play games that might be available on PC/Windows but you don't have to deal with Windows. That's why my sister has an Xbox. She ditched Windows for a Mac years ago because Windows kept getting more annoying, but the Xbox was easily usable in 2013 and it still is today.

bought an xbox series x + gamepass at the start of covid lockdowns. been playing since. before that i hadn't played video games in like a decade. maybe there aren't a lot of people in my category but to me gamepass + xbox is the closest thing to netflix for games. series x brought some nice things like quick resume which is fantastic for someone who only can dedicate a little time per day on gaming. for people who are not hardcore gamers it really ticks a lot of boxes.

Microsoft runs monopolies. Business software Monopoly specifically.

They cannot make user and customer focused software. They cannot make user and customer focused hardware. They do not care about customers.

Although I guess they have proven to be okay at data centers.

What should the Xbox be if Microsoft was a competent organization, like half of what apple is? And I'm not an Apple fan by the way

- since they have a monopoly of PC gaming, much to the pain of PC gaming users, that should afford them the ability to effortlessly Port x86 base games to an x86 gaming console platform

- because of their extensive relationships with PC hardware manufacturers, it should afford them the ability to produce a very powerful but cost-effective gaming platform

- Maybe even since steam runs primarily on x86, Microsoft could have partnered with steam to get their games onto that platform relatively seamlessly

- The PC gaming has several decades of dos and windows games that could have been updated, remade, or the like, so there should have been a wealth of ip available to them

- and with good coordination, should have been able to bootstrap dozens of software gaming studios to make actual good games exclusive to their platform

Well Microsoft succeeded at some of this. They did not succeed to the necessary degree, especially with treating their own custom games

every platform is also a community. a network of players, like a neighborhood, or a bar. Your friends & acquaintances are there. The whole is more than the sum of it's parts. It's more than just hardware, or exclusives.

I switched from PS to Xbox a few years ago, because my family and friends were playing there.

There's also some nice technical benefits, but compared to my friends, who cares?

Xbox is designed for kids, who's parents don't want them to have full access to a desktop computer and don't know how powerful of a gaming computer they need (people like to claim its cheaper but it really isn't, and it's easier to spend more on fast hardware you don't really need).

Because of this eco-system for kids, xbox has great multiplayer support (including locally for friends), and the software was a clearer focus with less bloat. I don't see xbox market going away any time soon unless people stop having kids

> Microsoft might as well give up and just sell a bunch of low-mid range gaming PCs in console shaped cases, running windows, ship them with controllers and just brand them as Xboxes.

But, that's exactly what they're doing right now, and you're still not satisfied? What would be different compared to today? It very much is exactly what they're doing.

TBH it seems like the Halo teams have been trying to copy COD for a while (going as far as adding COD mechanics to the Halo:CE remake).

If they're under the same roof, my optimistic hope is that they'll try to focus on how to differentiate the IPs. But realistically we'll probably just end up with even more micro transactions

Even talented teams given lots of independence and a large budget can coast and meander during development, and more importantly not release the interesting stuff in a timely manner (see GTA6).

At least with the Netflix model they fund every director available, including independent and C-list directors, and release everything quickly, using quantity to mask quality issues. Bigco Gaming is addicted to the 5yrs+ in-development blockbuster model and it's not producing many hits and the public notices that sort of thing.

What is there to sacrifice? There hasn’t been a new Halo game since 2010. Just fan fiction, remakes & anthologies.

Eh, a lot of these studios have not performed well at all over the last 10-15 years. It seems like Phil Spencer was the type of boss that let these teams run wild and be creative, and all he got back was a bunch of late, over budget, underwhelming games.

Halo Infinite from 343/Halo Studios stands out in particular. They thought that game was ready to ship in late 2020 and showed it off on their summer showcase, where it triggered such an intense backlash they delayed the game for a year and it still came out with minimal content.

Halo and Rare going under Activision could be a good thing. But if you want to be cynical, they are moving all of these studios out of "Microsoft Gaming Studios" and into Activision, Bethesda, King, etc. to make it easier to sell each of those individually or spin off the whole thing altogether.

They're essentially closing 343/Halo studios because they had independence for a decade and did nothing but flop.

There hasn't been a proper official Halo game since Reach though.

The next game is officially Unreal Engine based, so not quite the same swapping out Quake with Unreal.

I really would have liked Halo games based on idTech though. I can't see why idTech can't be a complete package for Halo, especially 7 and 8.

Firing a bunch of id staff probably crushes that idea more than it was previously though.

Given they just laid off most of the id team I wouldn't hold any hope.

Because 343 studios, quite obviously, doesn't think very highly of the original Halo trilogy. Paraphrased, their pitch is:

> Our goal is to make an actually good game for a "modern audience", but we'll leave some nods to the originals so those fans come back too.

Xbox360 was the second best system behind PS2 in my mind. PS4, Switch, and Super Nintendo get honorable mentions.

Fixing blue screens must be hard.

I'd argue the entertainment industry is reaching a ceiling on the quality that inflated budgets guarantee. Microsoft could throw a billion dollars at Halo 6 and then get an unfavorable response because Master Chief doesn't get the shotgun early enough in the campaign.

Somehow I doubt merging once-competing-now-heavily-downsized studios will be a recipe for success (see also the merging of Bethesda and Obsidian Software). Not that managing an army of game developers among one of the world's largest armies of developers is an easy task... but it does seem like the key is smaller teams with more creative liberty (hopefully working without the burden of an existing IP with such lofty expectations)

it is easy: give up on hardware and focus on games

Their only goal is to be more profitable.

I mean, I'm not even asking for a new installment, but the TV show is in New Vegas now, and not even a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas? In a world gone mad with advertising, I'm truly shocked that the single tie-in was a remaster of Fallout 4.