Gearbox in talks to do new Halo game

By Ellie Gibson Published 27 August, 2008

But no deal in place yet, says Variety.

Brothers in Arms developer Gearbox Software is in discussions about the next instalment in the Halo series, according to a post on the Variety blog.

The poster says "a source... Close to Gearbox" confirmed the studio "has definitely had conversations with Microsoft about doing a new Halo game and is very excited at the prospect". However, no deal has been signed as yet.

"As far as I can tell, it's quite possible Gearbox will be doing Halo 4 (or whatever they end up calling it, but it's not a certainty yet," the poster concludes.

This isn't the first time such a deal has been rumoured. It's mentioned in the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine (thanks Joystiq), which claims the new Halo game will be a launch title for the next Xbox.

But let's not forget, it's just a rumour for now. A rumour about a deal that hasn't even been signed yet, assuming it's actually happening, which it might not be, because it's all a rumour Allegedly.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (52) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • foamy #1 4 years ago

    ffs, why can't Bungie do it? :o I like the spirit of the team and the relationship they have with their fans. Meh!

  • asphaltcowboy #2 4 years ago

    Well, they completely f*cked the Halo PC conversion... so I hope it's not true!

  • anomagnus #3 4 years ago

    this is wrong, its just wrong

    and thats from a dyed in the wool xbot

  • funkyd #4 4 years ago

    No no no no no!

  • andywilkie35 #5 4 years ago

    Bungie should do it, fact

    If its gonna be a launch game for the next xbox, does that mean that we're not gonna see it for another 4 years or something? or does that mean that a new xbox is about 2 years away? i think they should release the next one on THIS xbox so i don't have to fork out for another one, but can get it sooner rather that later. bah

  • Triggerhappytel #6 4 years ago

    (or whatever they end up calling it, but it's not a certainty yet,"

    ...Close parenthesis?


    Anyway, I'm not sure they're the most appropriate company to do this; I can think of a few better. Nonetheless, as long as it doesn't go down a strategic FPS route like BiA, I'm sure it will be good.

    Also, I'm surprised MS don't have someone working on this already for the Xbox 3's launch. This game won't be a launch title if its not in development yet.

  • miiiguel #7 4 years ago

    For what we've read before it seems Bungie is not doing it because they don't want to. Bored, or something.

  • Moonprince #8 4 years ago

    You' ll likely see another xbox is 2 years

  • ps3owner #9 4 years ago

    I bought the first Xbox purely because of halo... I was a student back then and drunk, a lot... but the game was good back then. now? launch title for next Xbox? wow. almost PC upgrade speed now. buy the latest high speck PC, use it for 3 years, buy new PC... Xbox is getting closer and closer to these kind of release cycles. at least it's not as expensive as forking out for a new PC rig.

  • Beek4257 #10 4 years ago

    Here I was thinking the fight was, you know, finished. Silly me.

    Based on track record, I'd rather have Infinity Ward (CoD4) develop a future Halo game.

  • DFawkes #11 4 years ago

    What was wrong with Halo PC? It was Halo, on a PC. It worked, it had a flamethrower in it, what's so bad about it? gearbox are a reasonably good developer, they might do it well. Might not, though.

  • Zomoniac #12 4 years ago

    If Bungie won't do it then don't do it. Last thing you want is the reputation of your key brand in tatters because you tried to get some incompotent developers to cash in on it (although it didn't appear to do COD any harm). Gearbox are about to release a game some 20 months behind schedule that still appears to be running at 10fps.

    Call me cynical, but any dev team who delivers a project 20 months late, and in that same 20 months the head of the team has managed to amass some 72,000 gamerscore seems to me to have questionable working practices. If all the pity stories of devs having to work every spare hour as deadlines approach are true, a score like that isn't possible without some serious slacking off.

  • miiiguel #13 4 years ago

    ps3owner, it takes at least 2-3 years to develop a game with the scope of Halo so I don't think yor math is accurate.

  • asphaltcowboy #14 4 years ago

    What was wrong with Halo PC? It was Halo, on a PC. It worked, it had a flamethrower in it, what's so bad about it? gearbox are a reasonably good developer, they might do it well. Might not, though.

    Clearly you didn't have an nVidia card then! It had terrible performance, it was slow, pretty ugly and had horrible controls.

  • ps3owner #15 4 years ago

    it was an assumption miiiguel. not a fact ;).

    sorry for mixing it up. not my thread to comment I suppose. let's settle on 3 years then as compromise for a "launch title" and therefore new console.

    it's all rumors anyhow.

    edit: Typo
    Edited by 1 at 27/08/08 @ 15:50

  • ThePissartist #16 4 years ago

    It'd be interesting to see what they do with it, I seriously hope they use completely different engine - anyone else fed-up of the Halo1/2/3 engine now? I'd hate to see another Halo that looks the same but with more enemies on screen and slightly nicer textures...

  • miiiguel #17 4 years ago

    ps3owner:"not my thread to comment I suppose."

    Don't do that... I like 360s and I like you. What about that ?

  • ps3owner #18 4 years ago

    ok miiiguel. I'll keep commenting. :)

    and by "not my thread to comment I suppose" is purely based on my limited knowledge on latest Halo titles.

  • mcmonkeyplc #19 4 years ago

    Excuse me. TOSSERS. Did anyone play the PC version of Halo CE? Lets get that straight, it was Halo CE they ported not the shit Halo 2.

    Give them a chance. Gearbox are an excellent studio. Bungie are doing a Halo game but they are done with the Masterchief arc.
    Why? Because they dont want to be a one trick pony.

    Get a grip.

  • asphaltcowboy #20 4 years ago

    "it was Halo CE they ported"

    Yeah, that's the one I was talking about.

  • anomagnus #21 4 years ago

    @mcmonkeyplc

    i'm not a tosser! what i do with my penis isnt tossing, its LOVE MAKING!

  • HolyJebus #22 4 years ago

    I think bringing in a new developer to try something fresh is a good idea. Don't get me wrong I think Bungie are great to their community but I don't think Halo improved enough from Halo 1 to Halo 3. I was always hoping to be in an all out war with hundreds of characters on screen but it never really happened. I always thought Halo 3 should have been closer to a war since the graphics were never the strongest so I thought they could have fit more models on screen at once. I understand AI may have been the problem. Anyway I'm open to change.

  • ThePissartist #23 4 years ago

    lol@mcmonkeyplc

    Great rant!

  • ruttyboy #24 4 years ago

    "Bungie are doing a Halo game but they are done with the Masterchief arc."

    Hmmm, I wonder who the new main character will be. I'm willing to put £20 on it being a female Spartan with very thick armour in the chest region called Mistress Chief. Well maybe not the name, but everything else is bound to happen.

    Edited by 1 at 27/08/08 @ 16:17

  • ThePissartist #25 4 years ago

    @ruttyboy

    To add to your comments; she'll be wearing bright pink armour and be interested in interior design.

  • mcmonkeyplc #26 4 years ago

    So asphaltcowboy,

    You played CE on the PC and you still think this is bad news? You my friend have weird taste. Halo CE is the best console to PC conversion ever. People still Halo CE on the PC!

  • nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #27 4 years ago

    OMFG @ Randy Pitchford's Gamerscore... bet he outsources to India.

  • asphaltcowboy #28 4 years ago

    @mcmonkeyplc

    As I say, I had a not-top-end nVidia card and it barely ran. This on a game that came out on Xbox some 2 years earlier. You either had to have a top-end nVidia card or an ATI card. Rubbish. It didn't even look that good.

  • MattyD #29 4 years ago

    Randy Pitchford's mental gamerscore is purely down to him downloading every new arcade game off partner.net (the closed version of Live for developers / journalists / beta testing etc) and playing it for five minutes. If you look at his gamer card (tag: DuvalMagic) you'll see he's played something like > 300 games but barely plays any of them beyond the first couple of stages.

    I don't get all the hate for Gearbox in this thread either, they have a great track record and understand the FPS genre very well indeed.

  • mcmonkeyplc #30 4 years ago

    It didn't look good because your GFX card was shit. Play Half life 2 with a shit GFX card and then play with a good one. BiG difference in how it looks.

    Halo CE with a decent GFX card i looks awesome and still plays like Halo.

  • Triggerhappytel #31 4 years ago

    @ MattyD - although I think Randy Pitchford seems like a bit of a dick, I agree with what you're saying; Gearbox have a pretty good track record.

    If Bungie are adamant that they're not making the next proper instalment, I think Free Radical or perhaps even Swordfish Studios would make a better choice, though.

  • asphaltcowboy #32 4 years ago

    "Halo CE with a decent GFX card i looks awesome and still plays like Halo."

    My point being, that despite being old, it was completely not scalable. Therefore, it was a shit port. And my GFX card was perfectly reasonable thank you, it just wasn't an ATI.

  • ps3owner #33 4 years ago

    Randy Pitchford gamer score 63000?

    that's all I could find... Miiiguels is ~61k...

    is that a lot?

  • Collymilad #34 4 years ago

    I run Halo CE PC on a 6600GT and a 2.8GHz Proc - not top of the line by ANY stretch of the imagination. Hell it wasn't even top of the line back when it came out in 2006.

    You know what? Halo runs perfectly on it and thats at 1680x1050 and High details ffs.
    Edited by 1 at 27/08/08 @ 17:22

  • asphaltcowboy #35 4 years ago

    @Collymilad

    Are you a little bit silly? The PC port came out in 2003 - did you have a 6600GT back in 2003? No. The nVidia cards still had the FX moniker FGS. I had a GeForce 5600 FX (not *that* terrible a card), and it ran like a dog with one leg. I easily met the recommended specs. It was a rubbish port.

  • DFawkes #36 4 years ago

    I had a Geforce FX5500,and Halo ran like a dream. It seems the problem with the port was consistency - many seem to have great performance, many seemed to get sub-par. i can only go by my own experience though, it was a great port( if ran on my machine at least).

  • Zomoniac #37 4 years ago

    @ps3owner

    Pitchford's profile. 72,915 as of now.

  • BadMonkey #38 4 years ago

    Given Gearbox's reputation is largely based on the Brothers in Arms series, I can see a nice change of pace for Halo where you don't play the super-indestructible one man army guy but just a regular grunt caught up in the interstellar war. If they do that with the same attention to detail and integrity of the BiA games it could be exceptional. No? Well I thought it was a nice change of pace anyway...

  • Collymilad #39 4 years ago

    @asphaltcowboy

    No, are you?

    Ever heard how shit the FX cards were? Maybe that's why Halo ran like crap. The only semi-decent mid range FX card was the 5700 Ultra released near the end of the FX lifecycle - and even it had major problems with shaders.

    Also, sorry - but anyone who actually paid money for a FX5600 has no right whatsoever to call someone silly. That card was an absolutely turd - sorry, but that's a fact. Even a guy who commented below you had a 5500, also one of the revised ones released about the time of the 5700 and the 5950 - after nvidia had actually tried to improve performance.

    FX5600 ... lol. It had worse performance than a mid range GF4 Ti.
    Edited by 2 at 27/08/08 @ 18:37

  • Bremenacht #40 4 years ago

    I reckon it will be like opposing forces - same background; different story. You'll cross timelines/plotlines with the MC etc. Maybe multiple characters to choose from?

  • Nithron #41 4 years ago

    Yeah, the PC Halo port was notoriously bad, performance wise. It was perfect in terms of content and gameplay duplication; It just ran like crap, a lot worse than games with comparable graphics released around the same time.

    Oh, and also... It lost co-op. Why ffs?
    Edited by 1 at 27/08/08 @ 21:16

  • Vin #42 4 years ago

    The kids that are doubting GB's ideas for the franchise, I seriously want to bash in the face with my keyboard.

  • BadBoyBonner #43 4 years ago

    I'm with AsphaltCowboy on this one.

    Halo CE ran like a dog. Why GearBox didn't license the Unreal or quake engine to power the game I have no idea. Unreal 2004 came out about a year earlier on PC - looked miles better than Halo CE ever did and ran silky smooth - you could also throw in Quake 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstien.

    Maybe Bungie were determined to have their engine run on PC?

    Halo CE didn't look anywhere near as accomplished as UT2004 and ran at about 20-30% of the frame-rate on the same system.

    I think the point is - to most PC users of the time it came as a massive shock that - a port of a game that ran fine on a machine with 64mb total RAM, a 700 mhz cpu and butchered Gefore 3/4 underclocked hybrid - suddenly brought their 768 mb 128 meg Geforce card and 1200 mhz overclocked Duron to it knee's when UT2004 et al ran fantastically.

    Even with all that extra hardware - it was palpably worse than the Xbox.

    While arguments that the Xbox was designed as an out an out games machine, more efficient etc etc - fact stands - a game that came out a year earlier blew away anything on the Xbox (technically) and all PC users we're left wondering - what exactly was the Gearbox remit on the commission of Halo:CE

    My guess would be - make it so shit and such a resource hog that everyone thinks the Xbox is more powerful than it really is.

    Or the alternative is that Gearbox did the best job they were capable of - which wouldn't bode well for Halo 4 if true - unless the new Xbox is so powerful that even shitty coding would be unnoticeable on the first few titles (unlikely).

  • asphaltcowboy #44 4 years ago

    Thank you! And for the record, I love Brothers in Arms, I do hope they can do a good job!

  • Zomoniac #45 4 years ago

    Don't blame nVidia. I had a shiny new 9800 Pro at the time and it ran like wank on that as well.

  • asphaltcowboy #46 4 years ago

    Don't blame nVidia. I had a shiny new 9800 Pro at the time and it ran like wank on that as well.

    That's true actually, i did upgrade to a 9800XT after that and it was still a dog.

  • MattyD #47 4 years ago

    LOL, PC games. And indeed, LOL, PC gamers.

  • actionfitz #48 4 years ago

    No Bungie. No Purchase.
    end of.

  • actionfitz #49 4 years ago

    @Moonprince
    27-Aug-08 15:27:58

    "You' ll likely see another xbox is 2 years."

    and will probably still be cheaper than the PS3...

    /end troll bait
    :)

  • Yeevle #50 4 years ago

    Bit late now but I did have to do a double take...... Gearbox!!

    They are bloody brilliant, just saying.
    Edited by 1 at 28/08/08 @ 01:41

  • barnard666 #51 4 years ago

    brothers in arms has been delayed so many times, and it doesnt even look all that amazing to me...I would have thought MS would have gone with someone sles....but then who is there? free radical - errrr...actually star breeze might be the best bet...or a new internal studio.

  • mazzl #52 4 years ago

    let rare do halo ;)
    i would like to see a halo from criterion i actually liked black.