// PC GAMER — GAMING
Halo needed to change, but Activision faces a huge challenge to fix it
Gutting the team that existed to make Halo is a drastic move.
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“For Halo, our goal is clear: 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. It is a bold ambition, one that this franchise deserves. We have already begun assembling a purpose-built team, unique in capability and talent, ready and excited to deliver this next chapter with the community.” (via Game File, published September 22)
Microsoft has given up on Halo Studios, the team it formed and recently renamed for the express purpose of making new Halo games. Another victim of the Xbox Reset, the studio has been slashed down to its bones as part of another (but not final) wave of layoffs, and what's left of Halo Studios will now oversee the franchise in nebulous-sounding ways. Indeed: Halo Studios is no longer making Halo.
Now Activision is in charge, and as both a Halo and Call of Duty fan, the pairing isn't exciting.
Though I've been a vocal critic of Halo Studios' take on Halo over the years ("Halo Studios has no discernably new take on Bungie's landmark FPS" -Me, 2026), Halo Infinite eventually grew into a strong multiplayer FPS that I sunk hundreds of hours into, and Halo: Campaign Evolved was the team's best effort yet to embrace the series' quirky traditions while keeping an eye toward evolution. Ripping that work away from them a few months after shipping a Halo remake is a drastic move.
Let's take a moment to account for Halo Studios' history.
You can see why Microsoft thinks Activision is suited to fix some of those mistakes—Call of Duty can still produce a decent campaign. While the industry struggles with longer development cycles, Activision has maintained a steady pace.
That pace has come with real compromise—like never knowing if this year's CoD will be embarrassingly bad or merely good enough—and that's why I question if it'll be a worthy steward for what was once among the most celebrated and unique shooters in history. Despite its shortcomings, Halo Infinite stood out by doing things differently than Call of Duty with a slower pace, hipfiring guns, mirrored loadouts, power weapons, and vertical maps that had more in common with classic arena shooters than the 'boots on the ground' generation that Modern Warfare created.
I don't think that the outcome of this is going to be Halo becoming more Call of Duty-like, but I don't trust the Call of Duty machine to be a good influence on Halo, especially as Activision juggles two titanic franchises simultaneously.