As part of the Ubisoft Forward event today, it was announced that Master Chief and the Arbiter from Microsoft’s Halo series are coming to Ubisoft’s fighting game Brawlhalla in a crossover event. That’s cool and fun news on its own. But the announcement was also notable because the Halo franchise was a total no-show at Microsoft’s own Xbox Games Showcase a day earlier.
Halo and Xbox are basically synonymous, so some were left scratching their heads when Halo didn’t get a mention or any updates at Microsoft’s event. There could be any number of reasons for that, but the absence was notable all the same. Halo developer 343 Industries was impacted by the recent Microsoft layoffs. Separate from that, a number of high-profile senior staff–including Joseph Staten, Frank O’Connor, and David Ellis–have left in recent times.
It would appear that any announcements about the future of the Halo series are being saved for a later date. On the immediate horizon, Halo Infinite’s Season 4 update arrives June 20.