There’s a new rumor going around that the planned Halo battle royale game has been cancelled.
Before we talk about this cancellation rumor, we need to talk about the game itself. This game was never even officially announced or revealed, so everything revolving around it has to be taken with a giant, Lot’s wife-sized pillar of salt.
We reported all the way back in August 2022 that there was a mode listed on early builds of Halo Infinite, that did not make it to the final product. That mode had the given name of Tatanka, and when you select it, came with this description:
“Welcome to the Ring. Emerge victorious by being the last player standing.”
It later came to light that Microsoft was working with an independent studio named Certain Affinity on Tatanka. Certain Affinity is primarily made of former Bungie devs, and they have done support work on the Halo franchise through the years. That includes working on multiplayer on Halo 2, Halo: Reach, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
The first source for this rumor is Colt Eastwood, who, curiously enough, dropped it as a comment on someone else’s podcast, for Riskit4theBiskit. Riskit4theBiskit and the other hosts will discuss this, but if you check you can see it on the chat replay section on this timestamp.
Shpeshal Nick Baker brought Colt’s rumor up on the latest episode of the XboxEra podcast, where he corroborates that he received a DM on this last week. Sikamikanico then revealed he also heard of this rumor. Nick made it clear that he does not share sources with Colt. So we have three sources independently verifying that this has been cancelled.
It’s certainly a strange set of affairs, as for most people who don’t follow video game news closely, this mode or title that was never officially announced may as well have never existed at all. If a YouTuber were to make a video documentary on the making of Halo Infinite, this could be the most anticipated part of that video.
As things stand, Halo Infinite got its loyal userbase back to play the game in droves again, and Microsoft can chalk up the product as it exists today as a success. If we do see a Halo battle royale game in the future, it may not come up until a time when more of the other established franchises or companies have successful battle royale games themselves.
Maybe we’ll see Splatoon and Counter-Strike battle royales before we see them in Halo. Or, maybe the whole genre’s popularity eventually ebbs away, in the same way it happened with the plastic instruments music game, skating game, and other genres. In which case, Halo, and the industry at large, will move on to something else.
