Frank O’Connor, the Franchise Development Director at 343 Industries, recently sat down with The Seattle Times to discuss next week’s launch of Halo 4. Towards, the end of the interview, the conversation naturally turned to Halo 5. O’Connor was not shy about revealing that development on the game has already begun, but he was less clear on if it’s coming to the Xbox 360 or the (still unannounced) Xbox 720.
Seattle Times: You’re presumably working on the next version — “Halo 5” or whatever it’s going to be called will be the anchor tenant on the next version of the Xbox, right?
O’Connor: We’ve done as much prototyping and storytelling [on] the future arc of the universe as we have on technology. So we’re definitely working on the future but in some ways it’s technologically agnostic at this point.
Halo 5’s existence was first revealed at E3 2011, when O’Connor himself announced that Halo 4 would mark the “dawn of a new trilogy for the Xbox 360.” If Halo 5’s status is truly “technologically agnostic,” it might actually be in development for both the Xbox 360 and Microsoft’s next generation system. A dual Xbox 360/Xbox 720 release wouldn’t be the craziest idea ever and actually makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint.