Microsoft spokesman promises Xbox One's Halo will be released in 2014

When Microsoft announced it sold more than 3 million consoles by the end of 2013, one bit of detail caught the eyes of some Twitter users: Despite listing several games with 2014 release dates in the blog post, the next Halo game was absent.

According to a spokesman for the Halo franchise, however, the omission was simple: The game simply doesn't have a name yet, so it wasn't listed. That's the word from Rob Semsey, senior PR manager for the Halo and Forza franchises at Microsoft, who tweeted the following message:

Semsey quickly followed that tweet with another, promising that the next console installment for the franchise will ship for Xbox One in 2014.

The next Halo game was announced at E3 2013, with Microsoft saying it will be the first console installment in the franchise to run at 60 frames per second, though no resolution was announced. Since that announcement, Microsoft has released the top-down shooter "Halo: Spartan Assault" for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox One. An Xbox 360 version of the game is expected to launch sometime this month.

In a recent interview, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Studios, said 343 Studios considered having a Halo game ready for Xbox One's launch, though that would have come at the cost of "Halo 4" not being released for Xbox 360.