Will Halo become a PlayStation exclusive series? Answered

With the news of Sony’s Bungie acquisition, some players may have questions regarding the Halo franchise. Will Microsoft’s iconic first person shooter series become PlayStation exclusive?

Halo will continue to be a Microsoft-exclusive property. While Sony is purchasing Bungie, the original creators of Halo, the latter hasn’t held ownership over the Master Chief in a while. Bungie had signed away its ownership when it was acquired by Microsoft in 2000. After becoming a first-party studio, Microsoft owned the Halo intellectual property.

Shortly after the release of Halo 3, Bungie announced its decision to part ways with the Master Chief because the studio wanted to create something new. However, before Bungie could part ways completely, Microsoft required a few more Halo releases as stipulated by their contract. This is what led to Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.

As we now know, they were acquired by Activision and released the successful Destiny franchise before going independent again in 2019. In this case, Bungie managed to retain ownership over the Destiny intellectual property. If anything, the Sony acquisition makes it a possibility that Destiny could eventually become PlayStation exclusive. However, Bungie has stated that Destiny 2 will remain on all platforms and that they still retain creative control and publishing rights to the series.

Microsoft has comfortably owned Halo for 22 years. The only situation that would lead to PlayStation exclusivity is if some sort of direct contact or change of hands was made between Sony and Microsoft, or when pigs fly.