- Primary Subject: The decline of the Halo franchise
- Key Update: Halo is seen as a 'corpse' by fans, with a bleak future despite Activision's involvement.
- Status: Analysis
- Last Verified: 2026-09-23
- Quick Answer: We argue that the Halo franchise has lost its way and its former glory, detailing its decline from a gaming icon to a shadow of its former self.
Imagine yourself back in 2007. If you were too young to experience it, let me paint a picture: you just got home from school and booted up your Xbox 360; the gorgeous Marty O’Donnell soundtrack graced your ears as you got ready for another Friday night of pizza and Halo 3 multiplayer with the squad. You trash-talked people online and made fun of “PlayStation fanboys,” who, by the way, were enjoying a little game called Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. You loathed it; you were a Halo loyalist through and through. Life was good.
Fast forward almost 20 years, and given the franchise's dire state, you wouldn’t think Halo was a cornerstone project that helped put Xbox on the map and revolutionized online console play in the early 2000s.
The franchise has now landed in the hands of Activision, which will oversee development alongside its upcoming Call of Duty projects. This comes right after the lukewarm reception of yet another Halo: Combat Evolved remake, Campaign Evolved, which launched on the PlayStation 5 as part of a controversial multiplatform business strategy that has seen all their major exclusives go cross-platform. At least Gears of War is safe, for now.
Let’s be honest with ourselves as Halo fans: the franchise lost its edge over 10 years ago. Halo 3 was the pinnacle of the series in many ways; it was the last time the franchise was a proper global phenomenon. Microsoft was sitting on a goldmine and squandered the opportunity to make it a household name outside of gaming. Movie projects that never got traction devolved into a miserable, awful TV series that came too little, too late, paired with a string of mediocre games and a distinct lack of vision that tarnished the legacy.
I personally didn’t mind Halo 4; it had a solid campaign, even if the multiplayer was a little lackluster. But Halo 5’s “story”—and I’m using that word very loosely—was a major reason why 343 Industries (now Halo Studios) decided to soft-reboot the franchise, leading to another directionless entry that didn’t fully commit to being open-world and launched without core features like campaign co-op, Halo Infinite.
The recent mass layoffs at Halo Studios suck. Seeing developers who are genuinely passionate about the franchise left out to dry without leadership ever giving them a clear guideline for what they wanted Halo to be is terrible. Campaign Evolved is just the latest example of how clueless the decision-makers were, as they switched engines mid-development, abandoning the proprietary Slipspace Engine for yet another Unreal Engine 5 project.
It’s time to admit that whatever Halo is now, it’s a far cry from its former self. It’s a corpse being paraded around as if it still meant something. I’m sorry, but younger generations don’t care for Master Chief, and those who grew up with him—like me—feel so detached that I can hardly say I care about the future of the franchise anymore.
Halo is now so low in importance for the modern Xbox landscape—which now houses massive heavyweights like Call of Duty, Minecraft, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls—that no one would even mourn the lack of new Halo games for the foreseeable future.
In fact, I’d say the best option right now is to put the Chief back in his cryochamber and let him get a well-earned rest. That’s not going to happen, though. Whatever Activision has planned, I truly hope it doesn’t deviate too much from what Halo used to be—though it's deeply ironic that it’s now up to them to revive the franchise, considering earlier entries spent years trying to emulate Call of Duty with fast TTKs and a greater emphasis on movement over positioning.
In any case, I don’t recognize the Halo I grew up loving, and that makes me sad.
And that’s it. Stick with us at Gfinityesports.com: your go-to source for all things Halo.