What you need to know
- Call of Duty leaker TheGhostOfHope has posted on social media that a Halo crossover for 2023's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was cancelled "for completely unknown reasons."
- The report was corroborated by the Call of Duty news site CharlieIntel in another post, in which it revealed it heard the collaboration was planned to come out in 2024 before it was scrapped.
- Allegedly, the collab would have been an Operator skin of Master Chief — Halo's main protagonist — similar to the skins of the Spartan that are available in games like Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege.
- It's unclear why the crossover was cancelled, though a plausible theory is that Microsoft chose to save it for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 instead. It's slated to release later this month on October 25, 2024.
- Notably, Microsoft now owns both Halo and Call of Duty following the completion of its $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition last year.
Years ago, the Call of Duty and Halo franchises were often thought of as some of the biggest first-person shooter (FPS) rivals in all of gaming. Today, though, they're both under Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios umbrella thanks to the company's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard — and according to a new leak, there was a crossover between the two planned for this year that ultimately never saw the light of day.
That info came in a post from Call of Duty leaker TheGhostOfHope on X (Twitter) this week, in which they noted that the collaboration was coming to 2023's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but ended up getting axed. "Kinda crazy how a Halo x COD Master Chief collab was actually scrapped for MWIII for completely unknown reasons," they said, sharing an AI-generated mockup of a Master Chief cosmetic on Call of Duty HQ's in-game store. Allegedly, the Halo protagonist would have appeared in the shooter as an Operator skin.
The Call of Duty news site CharlieIntel corroborated TheGhostOfHope's statement, adding that the crossover was scheduled to release in 2024 before its cancellation. "We also heard about a possible collab happening earlier this year but reasons for its cancellation are unknown," it wrote in a post.
Kinda crazy how a Halo x COD Master Chief collab was actually scrapped for MWIII for completely unknown reasons. pic.twitter.com/r5FnQkqJSROctober 14, 2024
Neither party offered an explanation for why the collab was scrapped, noting that they're in the dark in regards to the rationale behind the decision. Some fans have suggested that Microsoft may have chosen to save it for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which is slated to release later this month on October 25 (on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, notably) and a follow-up to 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
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Considering that Black Ops 6 is poised to be one of the biggest games of 2024 and has the potential to be one of its best Xbox games and best PC games, I'd say this theory is pretty plausible. However, it's also entirely possible that the crossover was shelved for a completely different reason. At the end of the day, we'll never know for sure why the project was discarded, if it's still coming, or if it was ever even real at all unless Microsoft or Call of Duty's developers come forward with statements or an announcement.
It's worth noting that there have been 11 Halo crossovers present in other games since the sci-fi FPS series kicked off in 2001, including recent high-profile Master Chief appearances in the popular titles Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege. It stands to reason, then, that Microsoft would look to take advantage of the opportunity to bring the hero of its flagship Xbox property to the newly acquired and highly lucrative Call of Duty as a microtransaction cosmetic.
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Notably, this leak came at the same time Microsoft announced Black Ops 6 is coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming at launch. Earlier today, it also revealed new Black Ops 6 controller designs and console wraps for the Xbox Series X, with the former available now in Xbox Design Lab and the latter available to preorder for $55 on the Microsoft Store. The console skins are expected to ship on October 23 — two days before the game's launch day.
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Halo has been in the news recently, too; earlier this month, 343 Industries rebranded to Halo Studios and confirmed that future Halo games will be built using Unreal Engine 5, showcasing what the legendary franchise might look like on Epic Games' tech stack with a "Project Foundry" tech demo. At the same time, the studio revealed that multiple new Halo projects are in development, though no further details were given.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is slated to launch on October 25, 2024 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4. In a first for the series, it'll be available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass day one, as well as being available to play through Xbox Cloud Gaming.
