Campaign Evolved just signaled Xbox’s strategy for the next 3 years

I’m not saying that Campaign Evolved isn’t going to be as good or popular as Forza Horizon 6. I haven’t played it; I hear it’s pretty impressive. But that’s not why it’s a lucky pull for Sharma. Campaign Evolved was commissioned by the previous administration, for reasons I’ll go into. But it happens to chime perfectly with one of the tasks Sharma has set herself and the Xbox organization as part of the “reset” that has so far been a jobs bloodbath.

That task is to refocus on — and “fast-track” new games in — Xbox’s biggest franchises, some of which have been underused in recent years: particularly Halo, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. Given the extreme cost and length of blockbuster game development, this is a Sisyphean task, not to say an impossible one. Even if Bethesda Game Studios drops everything else it’s doing, The Elder Scrolls 6 is years away, and Fallout 5 will necessarily be years after that.

The answer to this problem? Remakes!

Xbox’s marching orders were in clear effect in a recent message posted by Bethesda on the future of its games. As well as reassuring words about progress on The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, Bethesda offered up remakes of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, and a new Fallout game made in partnership with Obsidian Entertainment. Again, the remakes are believed to have been planned for some time, but with Fallout 5 and Obsidian’s game in the earliest stages of development, it is the remakes that will be shouldering the burden of Xbox’s Fallout focus in the next few years.

There have been rumors that Halo Studios has a plan to roll straight into remakes of Halo 2 and Halo 3 after Campaign Evolved. This may or may not be true; I suspect Xbox top brass will want the developer fully focused on a new Halo game next. But this doesn’t mean these remakes won’t happen through outsourcing. In fact, I would count on it. A forced march through Bungie’s original trilogy would be the perfect way to while away the years it will take to set up a new entry — from a brand management standpoint, anyway.

While the Xbox oil tanker is laboriously turning, a steady stream of past glories will feed the market’s appetite for games with recognizable names. The perfect execution of this strategy is Capcom’s Resident Evil release schedule, which alternates remakes (legitimately very good and bold ones) with new releases at a steady clip. That’s the ideal, but it takes a level of foresight and discipline that Microsoft has never had as a manager of games studios.

Image: Halo Studios/Xbox Game Studios

Halo: Campaign Evolved is relevant to the whole Xbox enterprise in another sense. This remake is also a desperate “reset.” Halo Studios never fully filled Bungie’s enormous shoes, and 2021’s Halo Infinite was, we can all admit it now, a misfire. It’s not that the game was terrible — it was pretty good in the end — but after a dismal early showing, it was delayed and missed the Xbox Series X’s debut by a whole year, hobbling Xbox consoles for a generation. Worse, it never found its own identity, or a sense of relevance for Halo in the contemporary gaming landscape (despite several years of an esports scene propped up by a highly devoted community). An apparent plan for it to be some kind of live-service forever game fizzled, and the studio was eviscerated by layoffs, junking its in-house game engine in the process.

Campaign Evolved is a trial run for the new Halo Studios as it feels its way around Unreal Engine 5 and around the sacred text of Bungie’s first Halo game. Hopefully the remake process has taught the developer what a Halo game should be. It’s a microcosm of the whole Xbox enterprise right now: a humbled, smaller team trying to get back to basics and pick up the pieces of a broken brand.

Halo: Combat Evolved is such an epochal game. It defines Xbox to this day; there’s an argument that it remains the single best game Microsoft has ever released. Thanks to this game, Halo’s relationship with Xbox is completely symbiotic. That hasn’t worked out for either brand recently. Now they are both effectively being relaunched at the same time. Here’s hoping both reboots offer something more in the long run than retreads of former glories.