An in-development Halo game that was supposed to bring Microsoft"s sci-fi shooter series into the popular battle royale genre has reportedly been canceled before the game was officially announced.
The new report comes from the popular XboxEra podcast this weekend (via Eurogamer). During the podcast, noted Xbox leaker "Shpeshal_Nick" mentioned that he had received reports that the Halo battle royale game, which he says was being developed under the code name Project Tatanka, had been canceled after years of development. He did not offer an explanation of why the development of the game had stopped.
The Halo battle royale game was reportedly being developed at 343 Industries in collaboration with Certain Affinity, which had worked on a number of previous games in the Halo franchise. While the game has never been officially announced by Microsoft, Certain Affinity"s CEO Max Hoberman mentioned in a YouTube interview in July 2023 that their biggest current project at the time was a new collaboration with 343 Industries.
This would not be the first time a new Halo game from a third-party developer had been canceled before it was officially revealed. Original Age of Empires and Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios was working on a Halo-based massively multiplayer game for Microsoft, but that project was reportedly shut down in 2007. Ensemble Studios itself would be closed by Microsoft in 2009, after completing work on Halo Wars.
If the reports on the cancelation of the Halo battle royale game are accurate, it"s unknown how that might affect Certain Affinity. The developer was also working on its own original first-person shooter game, which it revealed in September under the code name Project Loro. No details about that game have been revealed, and Certain Affinity was shopping around to see if it could get a publisher to release the title.