November 29, 2012 7:04AM PST

By Eddie Makuch, News Editor

Microsoft Vancouver renamed Black Tusk Studios, seeking to double staff by year's end for "next big entertainment franchise."

Halo may not be Microsoft's tentpole franchise forever. Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver has been rebranded Black Tusk Studios, and has received the go-ahead to get to work on "the next Halo."

 

"What that means is we are working on Microsoft’s next big entertainment franchise," studio manager Mike Crump told the Vancouver Sun. "We're not working on an existing franchise, we're looking to build the next Halo here in Vancouver, for example, which is really exciting. We are building something from the ground up."

This news comes just months after Microsoft officially halted development on two games (Microsoft Flight and Project Columbia) at the company's Vancouver outfit and laid off a small number of employees.

To create its new game, Black Tusk Studios is seeking to double its staff in the next year from 55 to over 100. It is not clear just what the company is making, though a report from May 2011 indicated the firm was at work on aAAA Kinect-enabled shooter.

By Eddie Makuch, News Editor

Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He lives in Connecticut, works out of the company's New York City office, and loves extra chunky peanut butter.

"Kinect-able" shooter? Sounds like something they would release for the next-box with its new Kinect technology.


Could be borderline virtual reality as far as we know - I'd even say definitely if it's supposed to be a hardcore title.

if they just started working on it, it will be a next gen title. Hopefully kinect 2.0 does manage to be accurate enough for games that aren't on rails or party games. Either way I'm pretty dissappointed considering I'm not too fond of motion controls. Please microsoft give us the option to use regular controls as well...

Gamespot needs to be a little more up to date if they are going to post articles. It's not going to be a kinect game. When they first formed the studio it was working on a 'hardcore' shooter kinect game or something, but they scrapped that. Now it's a traditional controller game.

Yeah i remember they dropped the Kinect(at least for required) few months ago