At the absolute earliest the Nextbox will release in Holiday 2013 that would give Halo 4 a full year on the market.  MS themselves have said more likely 2014 will be the launch so that would be 1 1/2 - 2 years on the market.  In other words I think Halo 4 launching on the 360 makes perfect sense.

In terms of your problems with Reach's framerate drops and stuff like that you have to remember that was Bungie's first time ever using that engine for a game so it wasn't properly optimized or anything yet.  Reach still had some huge battles but certainly not the size Halo 3 had.  I think you'll see a return of mega huge scale in Halo 4 however.  343 is using a HEAVYILY modified version of the Reach engine so expect a big boost in both performance as well as graphics.  And you have to remember while it will only be technically 2 years between main Halo installments the is the first time ever two studios have worked on Halo simoltaniously.  Frank O Conner already stated Halo 4 has been in development well over a year, that mean it will actually have over a 3 year development cycle, probably the longest in Halo history and plenty of time to work out any technical issues.  Trust me Halo is too important to MS they won't rush it.

So no I don't think they should wait on Halo 4 till the nextbox because I think your pushing up the next 360's launch too soon.  Its NOT going to come spring 2013 I can assure you that. 

How do you know fall 2013 is the absolute earliest. I dont ever recall MS saying when the next box would come out. They have said the 360 will have a 10 year cycle but thats irrelevent because we dont know how long they will keep the 360 in production after the new console launches could be 5 years  could be 0. 2011 will obviously be down year on year probably still down with a 50 dollar cut. They could see that its down(or going to be down) and then also not wanting the wii u to launch first and they could release in 2012. There is no reason why they  couldnt release the xbox 3 in 2012 or early 2013.

True halo 4 will have a longer dev time than all other halo's besides maybe halo 1, but there dev team is smaller than bungies, probably alot smaller. So even with 3-4 years dev time it will likely have less man hours put into it than halo 3, reach.

The only way it makes sense to me for the halo 4 on 360 is if the new console doesnt come until 2014 or later, but i dont believe they will wait until then to release their next console. I think it will be out fall 2012-fall 2013. You have to remember the xbox was having the best sales ever when they launched the 360 and the ps2 was selling great when they came out with the ps3. They launched early so they could have good market share and with the wii u coming out in 2012 they may want to do that again.

Well this is the site:

http://www.343industries.org/forum/

It is nothing compared to Bungie but well they are working on it.   I don't really think the Halo games forums will stop at the Bungie site;..Their will be just no Halo 4 or Halo CEA forum but considering we don't see weekly updates anymore about Halo Reach and that 7/7 will be the day 343 industries take over officially the community will schrink yes will be still a few years though...

The nextbox will get Halo 2 Anniversary very early in his lifecycle that is what I am expecting.

Awesome thread! It makes me laugh when I hear people say Halo universe isn't very deep, but in actuality it's probably one of the deepest and most engaging universes in video game history.

Thanks I'll be keeping this thread alive and going for a long while still especially now that there will be plenty of new story related stuff to discuss with Halo 4 on the way and the CE remake!

And personally I believe Halo has the single deepest story of any game in any genre in the history of gameing.  Perhaps not always the best storytelling but in terms of depth there isn't really anything near on its level

apologise in advace as this will be off topic but i wanted to ask this question and it doesn't really deserve its own thread.

how good is this story in halo really??

way back i tried and hated halo (gameplay) but to be honest i sucked at shooters back then. now thanks to KZ2 i'm good and enjoy the FPS genre much more.

with halo being redone in HD for the 360 now (aka soon) seems like the best time to give it another shoot. so i'm curious how good the story really is. i don't have live gold so i'd only be playing for the single player elements.

is the story really that much better than other games?? money isn't a big deal to me but time is so if i get halo games it probably comes at the expense of playing dead space 2 and mass effect.

Halo is really deep for sure but no as deep as the mass effect universe, its not even close. But i do love halo. I would love to see a halo rpg, maybe the bioware team behind mass effect. they could start it after me3 wraps up.

The story is truely incredible.  Easily the best in a FPS EVER. 

The only thing with Halo is if you really want to experience how phenominal it is you have to read all the MANY various stories.  Much of the info for the story is in the novels and hidden inside the games for the truely hardcore players to find.  The actual story told in the games of Master Chief, Cortana and massive war between the UNSC and Covenant is amazing but its all the massive layers that are hidden under the surface.  The reaons the war is being fought, why the Halo rings are so damn important, just what exactly the Forerunners did, and the undying pest and galaxy consuming force that is The Flood.

Halo really is unprecedented in terms of story depth in video games even massively over any RPG out there its just it takes really dedicated fans to fully experience the universe.  If you'd like a good start read the stuff I have up right now in the OP and I'll be adding more all the time. 

I've read the Mass Effect novels as well as the Halo novels.

Mass Effect isn't even withing lightyears yet of Halo in term of universe depth.  Not even close.......