Thursday Will Be A Very Important Day for The Future of Halo

2007 was a peak year for Halo, the venerable franchise that is widely perceived to be flagship brand of Xbox. It was the year that tens of thousands of fans lined up at midnight launches around North America. “Cat helmet” became a fan sensation. People rode ATVs customized to resemble the Mongoose and “Finish the Fight” became a uniting chant.

Back then nobody knew that it was going to be as good as it gets for the series that helped launch Xbox as a legitimate force in video games. While some highs have been had since then, none would be as high as the night when Microsoft boss Bill Gates showed up to deliver copies and greet eager Halo fans. Since then, its creators at Bungie have gone their separate ways from Microsoft. That same year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare eclipsed Halo 3 as the most important shooter of the generation.

Can the next installment, Halo Infinite, return the series to glory? That's the overriding question people are asking when they ask about the game’s expected presence at this week’s Xbox Games Showcase.

At present, very little is known about Halo Infinite. With the exception of a few cryptic teasers – including one that runs as long as six minutes and reveals nothing but the inevitable return of Master Chief – 343 Industries, the current steward of the franchise, has been radio silent on the status of the in development shooter. We’ve gotten more information out of Nerf merch and Mega Bloks sets at this point.

It’s only been within the past month that Xbox has begun working fans up for some Halo Infinite hype. In a July 10 post on the Halo Waypoint, 343 Industries revealed we’d be getting our “first look at Halo Infinite’s campaign,” following prior hints that it would tie into the events of Halo Wars 2.

But these tidbits do little to address the biggest question, which is what Halo Infinite’s final form will be. Will Halo Infinite be an open-world shooter, expanding some of the experiments with open-ended maps that sister studio The Coalition took with Gears 5? Will it be an online service game like Bungie’s Destiny? Will it go the way of battle royale like Activision’s Call of Duty: Warzone and EA’s Apex Legends? Or will it be something else entirely? Whatever identity Halo Infinite takes will be crucial to its future.

Earlier this week, Xbox boss Phil Spencer pointed to The Master Chief Collection – an all-in-one platform delivering new editions of past Halo games – as a source of lessons on how customers experience the entirety of Halo. “There’s been a ton of learning in the studio around what does it mean to actually have a collection, the kind of totality of the Halo lore and stories and experience inside of one Halo world, one Halo UI, and platform,” he told Polygon.

“As 343 has gone through this journey, they’ve seen some of the benefits of not requiring that our customers make a decision between ‘Do I want to play this one or that one?’ I feel like in a way, the games almost compete with each other. You see that […] you spend a lot of energy actually trying to move the customers who are already playing your game to a new version of your game.”

Spencer’s remarks suggest an emphasis on meeting customers where they are in terms of their relationship with properties like Halo rather than trying to repeatedly sell them on a new title. “It’s similar to our Xbox message, and I think you’ll see that in terms of the way Infinite is talked about – even the structure of what the game is itself.”

Some argue that Halo Infinite needs to be a system seller – leveraging the power of the Series X to get people to sit up, take notice and whip out their phones to pre-order. Some have even hypothesized that it could be a loss leader – meant to rally players to Game Pass subscriptions and the entire Xbox platform than profit over units sold at retail. Whatever happens, a lot is riding on this week's reveal.

Personally, I’m not a Halo fan — I was somewhere else in my life when the series caught on — but it’s difficult to deny the emotions the series stirs within people. On subreddits, I'll see fans fondly reminiscing about their time with Halo 2. Many a Halo fan has told their story of getting together with a friend from Xbox Live for a pint. Halo’s place in gaming history is secure, even if its power to sell Xboxes may wane.

Halo Infinite will emerge in a very different world of shooters from the one it launched into with the Xbox, and bound to support a very different vision for the Xbox than that of any generation before. Master Chief may not be expected to carry the whole platform, but he’s definitely being asked to lead the charge into a new era. Let’s see what happens.

---