Speaking to GameSpot Microsoft Game Studios' president Phil Spencer has said that the next installment in the Halo franchise, announced at E3, will be "legitimate".
However, Spencer refused to comment on whether the game – coming to Xbox One – would be a core installment in the series or a spin-off like Halo 3: ODST or Halo Reach.
"It is the next Halo game that we are working on. We will talk more about the actual story arc in the game and how it plays out; we've got more time to talk about that," he commented.
Don Mattirck, the president of Xbox, has referred to the game in an interview with Bloomberg as Halo 5 but the title was simply called 'Halo' at its announcement during Microsoft's pre-E3 media briefing.
Spencer said that it was important to show how seriously Microsoft are taking the game "having [producer Bonnie Ross] come out and announce the game, making sure people know it's a legitimate version of Halo coming out, and when it's coming out, and features that they're focused on we thought was… important."
When Halo 4 was announced it was revealed to be part of the Reclaimer Trilogy which would extend to Halo 5 and Halo 6 but Microsoft has since expanded the scope the Reclaimer story.
A company representative said "While we originally said trilogy, we've actually expanded this to be more of a saga, so we don't want to limit the Reclaimer story within a trilogy."
Halo 5, or whatever the game ultimately proves to be, is set to be released next year. Halo: Spartan Assault has been recently announced for Windows 8 devices but it seems this will be the first year since 2008 in which no Halo title has been released on console.
