They're thinking of a more "persistent Halo engagement" so they don't go "dark for two years," potentially losing fans. Xbox Live multiplayer "helps obviously".
"We're coming up on, what, next year is the 10th anniversary. You watch the change in gamers in 10 years. The percentage of players who are playing Reach that were I'll say not old enough to play Halo 1 at the time, 10 years is a long time between launches," said Microsoft Game Studios corporate VP Phil Spencer.
"We definitely think about a more persistent Halo engagement for customers and not going dark for two years, and Live helps obviously with multiplayer to keep people engaged." Bungie is no longer in partnership with Microsoft and so now MGS executives can set the pace of development for all future Halo instalments.
"343 Industries is thinking a lot about how to take this franchise and turn it into something that people feel like they have an ongoing relationship with and they can entertain themselves more often," continued Spencer.
"But it's not, hey every November 6 or whatever we have to ship a game and build a production plan around that. We want to do things that make sense as a first party."
"Kudos to Activision because they've done a good job building a good game, continuing to release each year and I think the fans feel like it's a good thing that they do that. I think there are some things to learn, some positives and some opportunities, in what they do with that. Obviously they've kept the quality extremely high, which I think is important."
"We have some unique challenges and opportunities with Halo because it is a story based game built around a certain set of characters, which is a bit different than what they do with Call of Duty. Not better or worse, it's just different. But watching them and seeing what they do -- we take inspiration from a lot of places -- but obviously they're a big success."
It seems 343 Industries may start mass annualising Halo, although it will prove difficult given the galactic scope of the game's universe. Call of Duty easily taps into our own defined history, which most people know about and so it's already established.
Is 3 years too long between Xbox 360 releases of Halo? What about PC?
