You can’t read the news lately without seeing Gearbox Software in the headlines.

From rumors of “Halo 4″ to the departure of the studio’s director of platform technology, Corrinne Yu, to Microsoft’s new team tasked with working the “Halo” brand, broken by Kotaku this morning.

MTV Multiplayer reached out to Gearbox president Randy Pitchford for his thoughts on Yu’s leaving, what that means for his company and how that relates to their ever-mysterious “big-ticket” (those are his words) new project.

Pitchford started teasing this “big-ticket” project back in February, saying that it’s “big” and he couldn’t “oversell this one.” Immediate speculation pointed to “Halo 4,” given Bungie’s newfound independence. Yu’s move to Microsoft only fueled the rumors.

“We are really excited about Corrinne joining Microsoft!” said Pitchford in an e-mail earlier today. “I expect her to bring a lot of passion and inventiveness on that side. I think there is a lot of value for everyone for this transition.”

“Meanwhile,” he continued, “Gearbox is really excited about the changes we’ve made to our Platform department in-line with finishing “Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway” in order for our platform engineers to support the multi-platform launches of “Aliens: Colonial Marines,” “Borderlands” and an un-announced big-ticket game.”

Pitchford dropped a number of hints about this “big-ticket” game to me. In the same e-mail, he described the very same project as:

* “an unannounced but unbelievable project in development”
* “the big unannounced shooter“

So, we now know Gearbox’s hidden project is a shooter — shock! — but Pitchford also implies it’s a multi-platform project. That doesn’t sound like “Halo 4″ to us. While that doesn’t mean Gearbox won’t work on the next “Halo,” this particular project doesn’t appear to be it.