Though there was only a year between Bungie's last two releases--Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST--the gap between those two titles and Halo 3 clocked in at two years. However, Phil might be forgetting that Halo Wars was released in February 2009, putting the true gap at around 17 months.

It's true that there were three years between Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3, but it appears that this strategy of more frequent Halo releases has already been realized by Microsoft.

When asked about Activision's annual releases in the Call of Duty franchise, Spencer had praise for the publisher.

I'll just, again, be honest as a gamer. I used to look at annual releases of non-sports games as people just trying to milk me. I figured nobody had enough time to do a good job, and all of the negatives that we would associate with those kinds of scenarios. Kudos to Activision because they've done a good job building a good game, continuing to release each year and I think the fans feel like it's a good thing that they do that. I think there are some things to learn, some positives and some opportunities, in what they do with that. Obviously they've kept the quality extremely high, which I think is important.

Despite all of this, "there's no explicit strategy that says we're to ship a Halo game every year," said Spencer. With the franchise reins shifting over to Microsoft's 343 Industries, the door is open for just about anything as far as Halo goes.

"343 Industries is thinking a lot about how to take this franchise and turn it into something that people feel like they have an ongoing relationship with and they can entertain themselves more often." I think the Daily Challenges in Halo: Reach are a good example of this, but I'm sure Microsoft has bigger plans. Could this be the rebirth of the canceled Halo MMO project?