We know that Xbox and Halo Studios are gunning for a 2026 anniversary release with Halo: Campaign Evolved (despite no official launch date yet) - and as is the norm with modern AAA development, it looks like the Microsoft first-party team has brought a familiar co-developer on board to try and make that happen.
Coming by way of long-running Halo reporter Rebs Gaming, Abstraction Games — which worked as co-developer on the likes of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and lots of other big games — is helping out with the Halo: Combat Evolved remake. According to the report, Abstraction has a much bigger role with Campaign Evolved though, including work on combat, level design, modernising gameplay mechanics and more.
Windows Central has summarised what Rebs Gaming disclosed in terms of Abstraction's work on Campaign Evolved, which we'll share down below:
- Concept design for missions
- Level blockout and layout creation
- Polishing and finalizing mission content
- Creating scripted events
- Retuning combat and gameplay
- Adapting gameplay for new mechanics like sprint
- Supporting features such as four player co op
If this reporting is accurate, it'll be interesting to see if Xbox, Halo Studios and Abstraction Games can bring everything together in the coming months. We heard just last month that Microsoft may be aiming for a Summer 2026 release with Halo: Campaign Evolved, and in that case, it'd make sense that they'd want all hands on deck to get this thing in ship shape over the next few months.
We'll chuck Rebs Gaming's full Halo: Campaign Evolved co-dev report below - and yep, we'll just have to wait and see how Microsoft spreads out its busy 2026 schedule amidst huge anniversaries for Halo and the Xbox brand at large.