343 Industries has spoken about the next Halo, not really going as far to call it Halo 6 but acknowledging it as the next big mainline game. Of course, with the developer also focusing on supporting Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5: Guardians, there might some concern for resources on the next game.
In a new blog post, 343 Industries stated this wasn’t the case. It stated that a “small but experienced team here within 343” is supporting the “legacy” Halo titles with The Master Chief Collection as a priority. “There’s a wealth of experience and expertise on the team including engineers, designers, and test leads who are intimately familiar with what’s good, and not so good, with the Master Chief Collection.”
That being said, this team is separate from the larger development team that’s devoted to the “next Halo FPS title. There’s zero overlap or shared resources to ensure that the larger game team can remain laser focused on the future.” Of course, it was also reiterated that The Master Chief Collection is still important to the studio. “We are committing the necessary resources to do both projects right.”
The effort to update Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which launched with a smorgasbord of issues that still haven’t been fully resolved years after release, is fairly big. To assist the development team, there will be a “public flighting program” of sorts for Xbox Insider members. This will be a “separate version” of the game available for public testing with live patches and updates throughout development. It sounds much like a Public Test Server program that developers like Blizzard and Ubisoft Massive run for their live games.
As for Halo 6, we still have no information on when it will be announced or released. Stay tuned for more details, as always.