Ever since 343 Industries moved to Unreal Engine 5 and rebranded to Halo Studios, fans have been speculating on what the future of Halo could be. We have a new rumor suggesting that two Halo games are in the works, and they may not be what fans are expecting.
As shared by Rebs Gaming in his latest video, there are two Halo games in production. Do you remember Project Tatanka? That was the rumored battle royale Halo, which Halo Studios handed off to Certain Affinity. We reported the rumor that that game was cancelled last year.
According to Rebs, Certain Affinity is still working on a Halo game, and it’s likely to be the next Halo game to be released. When 343 changed game engines and studio names, Certain Affinity’s project also underwent a revision.
Rebs isn’t sure what form the game is in now, but what was once codenamed Tatanka has been referred to as Ekur since 2022. Rebs believes that Ekur is still a multiplayer game, but whether it has now become an extraction shooter, or is in some other shooter sub-genre, he isn’t entirely certain.
The other title Rebs claims is in production is a remake of Halo Championship Edition. He believes pre-production on this remake started in early 2024, and it is now in the middle of full production.
If this latter is real, than it will likely be Microsoft’s big marquee title for their tenth console generation Xbox, after the Xbox Series X|S. On the other hand, there’s a lot of uncertainty around Ekur. Halo Infinite shows the potential of a multiplayer Halo, but we’re certain Halo Studios and Microsoft will acknowledge that they were not able to fully realize that potential.
Certain Affinity is a decent choice to make this multiplayer Halo, if Microsoft can’t grab id Software or Treyarch to make it for them. They have been working on multiplayer modes for Halo games since 2007, and have also proven their worth with other studios. That includes the multiplayer for 2016’s Doom, and the multiplayer and multiplayer DLC for Call of Duty: Ghosts across six platforms.
They also helped develop Halo Infinite, so they know what things that title was not able to accomplish. Theoretically, that also puts them in position to make a new Halo that can better meet player’s expectations, and possibly even find new players.
Certain Affinity and Microsoft faces a lot of challenges in making a better Halo multiplayer game. But we should recognize that they were able to make something of Halo Infinite, weighing the good and bad fairly. Obviously, they did better than Sony did with Concord, but one could argue they’re in a better place to rebound than EA has with Apex Legends, Bungie has with Destiny 2, or their fellow Microsoft studio, Blizzard, has with Overwatch 2.
But lest we get carried away, Microsoft never confirmed both of these games, so don’t get too caught up with rumors that Tatanka AKA Ekur gets cancelled and/or rebooted again. We won’t know what the next Halo in Unreal Engine 5 will be for sure until Microsoft makes it official.
In the meantime, you can watch Rebs’ video discussing these rumors below.
