Yeah, the one thing I did like about Halo Studios' plans is that Halo: First Strike adaption, but yeah, even with only 5 missions and firefight there is no way that wouldn't take them at least 2.5 years to make.  But yeah, game adaptions of those first several books would have been nice if they gave them the proper time, First Strike, The Flood, Contact Harvest, Ghosts of Onyx were all great. 

Edit: But like Rebs just tweeted, sad though it is they we're losing a First Strike singleplayer campaign, what the hell was Halo Studios planning on doing that was multiplayer? It looked like they had no multiplayer plans in place after Project Tatanka, the battle royale, was cancelled last year, until Halo 7 possibly as much as a decade from now, after Halo 2 and 3 remakes and 3 of these book to game adaptations, that is a crazy long time to have Infinite and MCC be it for Halo multiplayer offerings, and I'm sure that is why Asha did what she did, she wants Activision to make a very profitable Halo multiplayer offering that rakes in money like CoD usually does.

If there was one thing that doesn't make me feel much from this business reset, it's the Halo IP finally getting ripped away, for the most part, from 343/Halo Studios. 15 years of mediocrity, chasing trends, and never once releasing a full product that was universally loved. There was always some aspect of their releases that was rightfully divisive.

The first handful of Halo novels are really good at expanding the lore. But without going too far like some of the later ones do. Considering Halo Studios/343i's track record I have little faith the level design would have been good in a First Strike game. 

As far as multiplayer I would have made a separate game for that. With seasons that last 3 months or so adding new content and levels. With standard Halo arena PvP, Firefight modes, and a mode similar to Helldivers. And when a new game came out make a season or 2 based on that game that adds levels, weapons, skins based on it. A Halo hub with all the Halo games accessible in it would also have been nice. So you can easily switch between them. 

I am curious what Activision will do with Halo. I hope it still feels like Halo and isn't just Call of Duty with a Halo skin on top. 

Looks like on Jez's podcast, he goes further into the reasoning why studios are being reallocated. Primarily under Activision.

Big reason is salaries. Microsoft's obsession with AI and its competition with OpenAI mean they're having to pay a large premium for engineers and tech people in general. These kinds of financials carried over to Xbox's game studios because the division is not properly separated from Microsoft. So it became financially unsustainable.

Activision is immune to these issues. It's a more efficient, gaming purpose built operation vs Microsoft.....not being that lol. Xbox had to famously use outsourcing and contractors because it couldn't hire full time employees at the same pay level as software engineering and AI jobs.

It also didn't make sense to have a separate finance and legal team for Xbox when Activision has its own finance and legal team.

So basically it reads like Christopher Dring heard that Kojima asked Sony for $400m basically because they had a laundry list of expensive A list Hollywood actors they wanted, Sony said no to both that pitch and a cheaper pitch from Kojima, Chris thought Xbox agreed to pay for the full laundry list of A-list actor pitch, but Schreier has heard from an Xbox source with firsthand knowledge of the deal that Xbox paid significantly less too sign Physint, though it could still go over budget before the end.

$400 million would be insane. Most single-player focused AAA games cost $200-$300 million on average. I am guessing Microsoft is paying closer to that average.

Seen alot of debate over this on social media these last couple of days due to leaks saying Activision might reboot the whole Halo series, which do you think Activision should do:

• Reboot the whole series starting with an eponymous game simply called Halo
• Keep Bungie games canon (1,2, 3, ODST, Reach) and decanonize 4, 5, and Infinite, starting fresh from Halo 3's Legendary Difficulty ending of Chief and Cortana drifting towards an unknown planet (Requiem in Halo 4)
• A follow-up to Halo Infinite that continues where 343i left off, with the awakened Xalanyn (The Endless) as the enemies

Personally I'm team 2, decanonize Halo 4,5, and Infinite and start fresh from Halo 3's Legendary Ending teaser of Chief and Cortana drifting towards a planet. It would be disrespectful to Bungie to reboot the series entirely, and pointless too because they would never beat the storyline of the Bungie trilogy, those game were all mid-90's meta games lauded for their story, kind of pointless to reboot the original trilogy only to do a worse job on the story.

While some would say it's also disrespectful to 343 to decanonize their story, there is just no way that Activision can leave Halo 5's story, and by extension Halo Infinite's story, canon, because Halo 5 just had too controversial a story, many fans felt betrayed by being unable to save Cortana after the teaser trailer for Halo 5 seemingly hinted at Chief trying to do exactly that (him crossing the desert and then with her AI chip in hand facing down a Guardian), others felt betrayed by all the setup in the Hunt the Truth marketing campaign having no payoff in the game. 

Maybe a Halo with Masterchief in the background. He doesn't need to be the MC anymore.

I think the best thing Activision can do is move away from Master Chief's story. There are so many other stories and characters in the current universe they can use, no reason to continue or reboot what is already established. For example, Spartan Jerome would be an excellent protagonist in the next Halo game.