2009 Halo Wars, the first Halo game produced independently of Bungie studios is released, excellent sales yet has a debatable storyline. Still popular to this day with a regular population of 14000 players.
2010 Bungie says goodbye to Halo with the release of Halo Reach. Microsoft is now completely free to do whatever they want with the Halo License.
Since then, in 4 years we have had, at best, 1 and a half games. Halo 4, which I personally believe had a soulless campaign with a dull storyline (I don’t care about the existence of terminals, no storyline should depend on sometimes hard to find half -Yoinked!- cutscenes) and multiplayer that was okay at best. The Master Chief Collection was an excellent idea, poorly executed, but it’s existence alone makes me very happy. Thank god I can still go play the first 3 (+ODST) Halo games on the X1 (I play very little H4,it bores me).
So now we nearly have 343s second foray into the Halo Universe, Guardians. And though I’m sure this will still feature the tepid promethean storyline, even the gameplay seems gimmicky and ill considered. I admit however, Chief finding blue team does pique my curiosity.
But why so little? Microsoft owns a franchise worth billions(debatable perhaps)? Yet the only spinoffs they seem willing to dedicate to are silly mobile phone games. Microsoft have several other ways to go, they don’t need to stick to the tale of Master Chief, nor do they need to keep progressing just that storyline.
The possibilities.
Halo Wars.
Whilst I feel that continuing that storyline would be a terrible idea, a rejuvenation of this concept could do excellently. I would abandon the OTT and unnecessary storyline of the original game in favour of straight forward warfare of Covies vs Humans. I’d even go so far as to say a storyline would be unnecessary, think more a galactic multiplayer campaign, or perhaps just planetary.
ODST Sequel.
I personally hold this in high esteem as one of my favourite of all Halo campaigns (if on Heroic and with the tough skull on 
) however I did feel it stuck too closely to Spartan II gameplay, but it was only a half game. Microsoft and 343 have the capability to expand this. Perhaps the New Blood book will make a direct sequel difficult, I would personally prefer something with a much darker tone and a more dismal feel. Something like that expressed in the ODST live action trailer.
Now these wouldn’t necessarily need to hit the massive sales of the main titles. Halo Wars, a niche title at best, still hit 2.5 million sales making a cool 75 million (I might be wrong on that number). I expect a sequel would hit 1.5 easily enough. ODST however, or whatever, is where the true potential lies for the Halo franchise. By investing in a different style of game, perhaps more realistic or squad based. 343 would have an opportunity to bring in many more players that might otherwise have given Halo a miss. From here they would likely buy the premier Halo games. I could be wrong.
Obviously there are dozens more possibilities, I do however believe that the fate of the Halo franchise lies with Halo 5. If this does well I reckon Microsoft will unleash the dogs of creativity upon us. Letting Halo go to places it has never visited before. If not, they’ll probably kill off Chief in Halo 6.
Sales data taken from VGChartz, player numbers from the Halo Wars website.
I expect this sort of discussion may have come before and will come again, yet I feel the point worthy of being made. Please keep any discussion polite.
P.S. I may be a recruit on this forum, I do however have much knowledge of the Haloverse and have spent more time than I care to admit on the Halo games.