Microsoft has given up on Halo Studios, the team it formed and recently renamed for the express purpose of making new Halo games. Another victim of the Xbox Reset, the studio has been slashed down to its bones as part of another (but not final) wave of layoffs, and what's left of Halo Studios will now oversee the franchise in nebulous-sounding ways. Indeed: Halo Studios is no longer making Halo.

Now Activision is in charge, and as both a Halo and Call of Duty fan, the pairing isn't exciting.

Though I've been a vocal critic of Halo Studios' take on Halo over the years ("Halo Studios has no discernably new take on Bungie's landmark FPS" -Me, 2026), Halo Infinite eventually grew into a strong multiplayer FPS that I sunk hundreds of hours into, and Halo: Campaign Evolved was the team's best effort yet to embrace the series' quirky traditions while keeping an eye toward evolution. Ripping that work away from them a few months after shipping a Halo remake is a drastic move.

You can see why Microsoft thinks Activision is suited to fix some of those mistakes—Call of Duty can still produce a decent campaign. While the industry struggles with longer development cycles, Activision has maintained a steady pace.

That pace has come with real compromise—like never knowing if this year's CoD will be embarrassingly bad or merely good enough—and that's why I question if it'll be a worthy steward for what was once among the most celebrated and unique shooters in history.

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