Halo Studios reportedly has no new campaign or multiplayer game in active development, with its teams currently scrambling to produce concepts for whatever comes after Halo: Campaign Evolved, which launches in just a week or so.

The claim comes from a new report by Rebs Gaming, who says he received the information from a direct source before passing it to two additional sources who both said it was legitimate. None of this has been officially confirmed by Microsoft or Halo Studios, so keep the usual fistful of salt nearby.

According to Rebs, Halo Studios originally intended to release three games over three years, beginning with Halo: Campaign Evolved. The other two projects were the now-cancelled multiplayer game Project Ekur and a new campaign, apparently the project previously referred to as Halo Next.

Both have now reportedly been cancelled, leaving Halo Studios without a new campaign or multiplayer game in proper development. Rebs claims development teams are instead attempting to quickly put together concepts so that the next Halo project can finally be decided upon and enter production.

That’s a startlingly empty roadmap for a studio that announced in October 2024 that it had “multiple projects” in development, all being built using Unreal Engine 5. Less than two years later, Rebs’ reporting suggests that only Campaign Evolved survived.

Project Ekur was apparently supposed to fill the multiplayer slot in that three-game plan. As I covered earlier this month, it went through several different forms during development, including a large-scale experience influenced by Halo 5’s Warzone mode. Rebs now adds that it eventually came full circle and became a battle royale again shortly before being cancelled.

Ekur was reportedly being considered for either a reveal or potential soft launch during Halo Fest. With the project gone, Rebs doesn’t expect a new game to be announced at the event. The best-case scenario, he suggests, may be Halo Studios announcing that something new has finally entered development.

The studio is apparently considering DLC for Halo: Campaign Evolved, although that does not appear to have entered full development either. Presumably, much will depend on how the remake performs when it launches on July 28.

There is also said to be internal uncertainty over whether the rumoured Halo 2 and Halo 3 remakes will ever be made, too. That’s a big change, though, because’ Reb’s prior reporting from May said both remakes were already in development.

Assuming Rebs’ new reporting is correct, this is absolutely nuts.

Having no new mainline Halo campaign in development is insane. Halo Infinite launched in 2021, and even if Halo Studios approved a new campaign tomorrow, modern development times mean it would probably still be years away. One of Xbox’s biggest franchises is potentially heading towards an enormous gap between original games because the studio responsible for it apparently hasn’t even settled on what comes next.

Halo Studios deserves plenty of criticism for that, especially after presenting its rebrand and move to Unreal Engine 5 as the beginning of a grand new era. At the moment, that new era consists of remaking the original game again, cancelling two projects and hurriedly sketching out concepts for another one.

However, the responsibility doesn’t stop at the studio door. Halo Studios is owned and overseen by Xbox, which is supposed to be managing its developers, setting priorities and intervening when major projects begin drifting into trouble. Halo joins the likes of Fallout, The Elder Scrolls and even Gears of War as franchises that have not been handled well, letting all the big names languish.

Halo isn’t some forgotten property Xbox found at the back of a filing cabinet. It is one of the franchises that built the entire brand. So what, exactly, have Halo Studios and Xbox been doing?