Halo 4 coming to Xbox 360, not Xbox 720

The man behind the team that’s working vigorously on the next entry in the Halo franchise has confirmed it will be coming to the current generation Xbox 360.

Halo franchise director Frank O’Conner responded directly to the people on game enthusiast website Neogaf, where speculation had begun to swell that the next iteration of Halo would be one of the flagship titles for Microsoft’s next game console.

The speculation had been growing slowly ever since developer 343 Industries dodged questions about the game and its technical specifications at E3 earlier this year.

So O’Conner decided to end the discussion before it snowballed too far out of hand. On the Neogaf forums, he declared, “Halo 4 will be on Xbox 360.”

He added that the game will “use a modified core of the Halo engine(s). Not really a singular engine since it goes through fairly radical evolutions all the time.”

Of course, at this point there have been no confirmed details about the next generation of the Xbox, though it’s widely believed Microsoft will spill the beans at next year’s E3.

Halo is one of the best franchises for moving hardware, so obviously it’s only a matter of time before it comes to the Xbox 720 – and it doesn’t even need to be Halo 5; it could be some other spin-off or some such. But for now, it seems Halo is cozy on the 360.