Halo Is Already Giving Activision a Call of Duty Problem It Has Never Had to Solve

Xbox confirmed this week that Activision will develop the next mainline Halo, while Halo Studios keeps only a small team to support the games already on the market. And by far, the most poetic thing about this news is that though Activision has spent two decades building the most reliable shooter machine in the industry, it now owns the very franchise Call of Duty once had to unseat. How the publisher might handle both the CoD and Halo franchises moving forward would also be the biggest elephant in the room, if Xbox and Activision hadn’t already (albeit vaguely) addressed it.

Indeed, Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty was careful to say the team making it is “separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty.” Yet if you take him at his word, that separation creates a problem Activision has not needed to solve until now. The publisher now owns both of the shooters that defined console multiplayer, and it has every incentive to keep them from fighting over the same players.

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Activision Now Owns Both Sides of an Old Rivalry

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I doubt this context is necessary for most, but let’s go back a bit to when Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare launched within weeks of each other in the fall of 2007, one of gaming’s most legendary eras. The rivalry that followed shaped a decade of console shooters—Halo had the sandbox, the vehicles, and even started arena matches—Call of Duty had loadouts, killstreaks, and a progression system that kept players grinding. Before long, Call of Duty was challenging Halo 3 at the top of Xbox Live’s most-played charts.

Halo spent much of the next decade reacting; Halo: Reach added loadouts and armor abilities, Halo 4 leaned into custom loadouts, ordnance drops, and default sprint, and Halo Infinite launched as a free-to-play live-service game with a battle pass. Each move made some sense on its own, but together they sanded down much of what made Halo feel different in the first place. That history matters now that one publisher controls both franchises, as a Halo designed to compete with Call of Duty would be competing with its own publisher, and it’s hard to imagine that fight going Halo’s way.

Why Activision Wants Halo to Stay in Its Lane

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Image via Halo Studios

Image via Microsoft

So when you ask what can be done now—while looking at everything Call of Duty covers in 2026—it may seem like there isn’t much room left for Halo to thrive. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives from Infinity Ward on October 23 with a campaign, multiplayer, and the return of the DMZ extraction mode, while Warzone runs alongside it year-round. Between annual releases, battle royale, and extraction, Activision already has nearly every flavor of multiplayer shooter covered.

A new version of Halo that drifts into any of those spaces would be a business risk that might split an audience Activision already has, competing for the same hours, the same battle pass money, and the same fall release window. But Halo has always been something different, and the smarter play for Activision (and the better one for Halo fans) is to treat the two series as complements—games that ultimately depend on their differences as they always have, and extending that to the business, too. There’s already a hint that Xbox is willing to treat its shooters differently, as Modern Warfare 4 is skipping Game Pass at launch, the first mainline Call of Duty to do so since Microsoft bought Activision. It follows that Halo also has room to play a different role in Xbox’s lineup, though whether Activision sees it that way is another question.

What Activision’s Halo Might Look Like

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Image via Halo Studios

Image Credits: Microsoft, Halo Studios

That may seem like common sense, but that’s because that’s all it really is. Halo’s best chance of thriving lies in being everything Call of Duty isn’t, so the blueprint is essentially readily available. And this doesn’t seem to be lost on the franchise’s new shepherds, as Activision president Rob Kostich says the goal is to stay “true to what made players love it in the first place.” Nobody has to guess what that means, though I hope it doesn’t do much extending past Halo 2, personally.

In an effort to be a bit more specific, though, it’s worth going over some pillars of the franchise, each of which is something Call of Duty has little reason to pursue. These are safe grounds for a publisher trying not to cannibalize its biggest franchise. Fortunately, they’re also the parts of Halo that longtime fans have missed most.

Ensuring Halo’s Campaigns Maintain a Spotlight

Call of Duty campaigns are tightly scripted blockbusters, built around set pieces and, in recent years, a star-studded cast (Modern Warfare 4 has roped in Mads Mikkelsen). Halo’s best campaigns have always worked differently: they drop players into open, experimental combat spaces with vehicles, AI allies, and enemies that react unpredictably, ideally with friends in co-op. A campaign-first Halo built around the Master Chief would give Activision something its biggest franchise doesn’t offer.

Double Down on Arena Multiplayer, Forge, and Custom Games

Halo multiplayer at its best meant everyone spawning with the same weapons and fighting over power weapons and map control. That design is the opposite of Call of Duty’s loadouts and killstreaks, and it’s exactly why the two can coexist. Activision should leave battle royale and extraction to Warzone and DMZ, especially since Halo’s own battle royale mode was clearly a rotten idea from the jump; it didn’t see the light of day before being reportedly canceled back in 2023.

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An equally important part of Halo’s multiplayer is Forge and custom games, the very spaces where Halo’s community has kept the series alive between releases, building everything from competitive maps to entirely new game types. Call of Duty has never centered on player creation in the same way, which makes it one of the clearest lanes Halo has to itself. Shipping the next mainline Halo with robust creation tools on day one, regardless of what it is—reboot or sequel—would give players a reason to hang on for months, if not years, post-launch.

The Quick-Start Caveat

In terms of the industry intangibles that surround these games, a slower release rhythm is the right long-term goal for Halo, but that comes with an important caveat. The series can’t afford another five-year silence to open Activision’s run, and Infinite is already nearly five years old with a new team only now being assembled. Before Halo can settle into a patient, event-style cadence, Activision has to get its first game out the door relatively quickly.

The Halo Problem Call of Duty Can’t Solve

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Ultimately, the news about Halo Studios layoffs and the franchise’s shift to Activision is complex, and reactions have been accordingly mixed. So, as an outsider, I think it’s important to stick to what we might know: for one, nobody in the industry ships a shooter every year, on schedule and at a massive scale, better than Activision. That expertise solves plenty of problems, but it can’t tell the new team what Halo should be.

Those answers have to come from Halo’s own history, and from a willingness to let it be the stranger, slower, more sandbox-driven series it always was. If Activision gets that right, owning both franchises could end up being good for both. If it gets it wrong, Halo becomes one more shooter in a lineup that already has plenty at best, a legacy IP at worst.