Bungie: Recon is our last Halo trilogy project
Franchise's original developer agrees next title will be "final statement" in the series for the company - but not necessarily for the brand
US-based developer Bungie has revealed to GamesIndustry.biz that the newly-announced Halo 3 Recon, set for release next Autumn as an extension to the super-selling Halo 3, will be the last project in the first-person shooter trilogy that the company plans to undertake.
Bungie is currently working on three separate projects, of which only the Halo title is so far known to the public, but according to community and PR director Brian Jarrard that team currently working on Recon won't continue to work on Halo projects in that series once the game ships.
"I don't think so," he said during an interview in Tokyo. "We've already put a couple of map packs out, we do have more maps on the way. We actually have a Mythic map pack coming out early next year. We don't have firm details or a date yet, but we do have one more map pack coming out, and then we do have some maps associated with the actual Recon retail release.
"But I think when this project wraps up in a couple of months that will be the time when that team moves on to something else - part of that team will move on to something else and part of them will probably be absorbed into one of the other projects that are already on the way."
And when asked if that meant Halo 3 Recon would be a "final statement" from Bungie as far as the Halo trilogy was concerned, Jarrard agreed.
"I think so," he said - but did point out that the company has always supported its community, and has no plans to change that in the near future. "We've stood by this game, and we're going to keep standing by it.
"Obviously apart from the retail products release we're updating the matchmaking playlist every month on Xbox Live, we're adding fun 'Double XP Weekends' and we just rolled out a bunch of achievements that are all retroactive so people that bought our map packs previously now have about 250 new gamer points to go and achieve.
"So it's fan service for us - the audience is there, they demand it, we're still having fun with it, so we're just going to keep going for as long as we can."
The announcement of Halo 3 Recon was made during the Microsoft press conference at this year's Tokyo Game Show, taking place at the Makuhari Messe until Sunday October 12.
There is no word as yet on what the other projects Bungie is working on may be, but while one of them is definitely new IP, the other could be something different within the Halo universe.