New Microsoft First-Party Developing Head Believes That Halo Must “Take Risks”
A lot of disscusion has been made around the announcement of a new Halo title – presumably Halo 6 – over the past months. Amidst all the speculations, we might be facing a whole new era for the franchise. The new head of first-party development for Microsoft thinks that the Halo series need to take risks, along with other flagship franchises like Forza and Minecraft.
In the new issue of MCV, Matt Booty, head of first-party development for Microsoft, talks about his view on the future of first-party Microsoft franchises, a few days before his first appearance at E3 2018 under his new role in the company. Among others, he believes that Microsoft has succeded a lot through its first-party releases but more must be done.
He states:
We’re very lucky to have a number of established franchises. When you think about Minecraft, Halo and Forza, each has over a decade or almost a decade of foundation underneath them. We need to use those franchises as a home base from which we can expand. That strength lets us branch out and take risks with them.
With games being as large as they are, with the move to games as an ongoing service…it is difficult to pivot quickly and try to chase after trends that might happen even on the scale of a year. In business terms a year can be a long time, but development time being three to four years these days, that’s the span we need to think about. We’ve got to get our strategic long-term bets, our game development cycles and the things our players like to do in sync. And that will set us up for success.
What we can expect from Microsoft in the near future is announce their plans but we might be facing a few different paths in that aspect. We shouldn’t be surprised if a new Halo title gets indeed announced, but is something completely different than what we used to. We shall know more at Microsoft’s showcase during E3 on June 11th.