One of the reasons that Bungie officially left Microsoft in October is that a number of employees had been working on nothing but Halo games for the past 10 years. They wanted to work on new properties, and as a part of Microsoft that likely wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

Now that Bungie has regained its independence it's already begun work on new IP, studio manager Harold Ryan revealed in an interview with Develop. "We're actively engaged with the senior staff here on a couple of new IPs right now, but the team that can generate cool Halo games is still running full-speed as well," he said.

Gamers worried that Bungie is burnt out on Halo shouldn't be. "We shipped Halo with 45 people and now we're 115, so two thirds of the studio have only shipped one or two games in the Halo series. For the most part they came here because they were really excited to work at Bungie and in the Halo universe. So from that point of view we don't have a shortage of people happy to make Halo games," he added.

The desire to create new IP was always there, however. "During the development of Halo and Halo 2, we had other, non-Halo IPs in development and we killed those projects both times. Both teams were swallowed whole by the Halo team. With Halo 3, that was the first time we know that we couldn't let that happen – it's not an acceptable way out to add 20 people to the project by killing that prototype," Ryan explained. "We kept that prototype running throughout the development of Halo 3 and now we have a creative team which feels like they own that."

"We also have Halo DLC on the way, and a new IP prototype that we are very excited about. Then we have other Halo games that are cranking along also. So the end result so far has been exactly as it should have been – we're happy, excited, and doing our best work on a path that lets us grow," he concluded.