Figured it was obvious lol but yeah I’ll update it.

The latest report on Activision's Halo team from Rebs Gaming:

• His source says Activision pitched 2 Halo games to Xbox before the announcement that Halo was moving to Activision was ever made, one multiplayer, one singleplayer. Sledgehammer Games made a gameplay prototype for both the singleplayer and the multiplayer on the Infinity Ward engine as part of Activision's pitch to Xbox. The use of IW on the game is still under consideration though
• The original plan for the singleplayer game was a soft reboot that didn't decanonize anything 343 did, but would ignore the setup of Halo Infinite for The Endless as the enemy in favor of something else (kind of like Halo Infinite just skipped over most of the war between the UNSC and Cortana's AI army that Halo 5 setup)
• His source says Activision has dropped plans for separate singleplayer and multiplayer games and is now planning a full-featured game, which The Hollywood Reporter also reported from their sources
• His source says nothing has been decided yet on the campaign, both partial reboots and full reboots are still under consideration, the current idea for a full reboot is a Master Chief origin story (presumably following the creation of the Spartan program and presumably the war against the Insurrectionists the Spartans were originally made for)
• An anonymous former Halo dev has told him that they hope Activision learns from their mistakes at 343/Halo Studios, that they should show people important bits of the story in game instead of hiding them away in the expanded universe projects and confusing players, listen to fan feedback instead of ignoring and thinking "we know better than the fans", and uproot indecision, incompetence, and corruption quickly

Not rebooting it yet and doing a prequel... If gears performs commercially as well as it is critically, it could be a great middle ground.

Kicks the reboot question down the road but it also could reinvigorate the franchise.

Yeah, it's not a terrible idea, a prequel origin story focused on John's forced conscription at 6 years old, Spartan training, Blue team's early missions against the Insurrectionists, and Blue Team's fights against the Covenant pre-Halo 1, presumably ending with their mission on Reach during it's fall that separated Chief from the rest of Blue Team for Halo 1. As long as they follow established storyline there from Eric Nylund's Fall of Reach book and other sources, it kicks the can down the road on the big to reboot or not to reboot and how much to reboot question, let's them cut their teeth on something brand new before they attempt something as daunting as rebooting either of the two trilogies.

Gears back on its game, a new Ace Combat, a new arcade racer in Star Wars: Galactic Racer, feels like the early 7th gen years!

Does putting so many of the studios onto Activision make those games multiplatform cause of the 10 year rule? (Even when the ten years will be faster pass by than we may think)

The 10 year rule was specifically for CoD, but it would be surprising for anything out of Activision themselves is console exclusive because of the expected revenue they bring in.

From what I understood reading other people's analyses of the move, putting the studios under Activision or Bethesda was basically to ease the Xbox books (apparently it cost less to pay them as being a Microsoft employee was more expensive) and bypass some dumb and unproductive Microsoft corporation employee laws (like the 6 month contractors at 343/Halo Studios). xzzz

For example, I think The Coalition will soon move under Activision after shipping Gears E Day, but the next Gears will still be exclusive either way. Xbox Game Studios will still exist, but mostly for publishing third-party games like OD and Physint and whatever else comes next.

Yeah I saw Jez talking about that last week. Here's my summary from a previous post:

"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 I do get the reasoning behind these moves. Along with the Coalition under Activision, I figure inXile will go under Bethesda when Clockwork Revolution ships. Playground, not entirely sure. Could go either way, but after Fable releases. What's left of Halo Studios.......who knows lol

But I can see XGS existing purely for third-party publishing, which Asha commented in the 100 day reset announcement that they wanted to not only focus on first-party exclusives, but also third-party exclusives. Which I hope she wasn't just referring to Kojima lol