Is the age of battle royale over? If it is, it's not hard to see where multiplayer games are going next. As hero shooters run out of steam, instead we're seeing a pivot to extraction shooters, in the vein of ARC Raiders, Marathon and Escape from Tarkov. It seems that Halo Studios could also be looking to jump on this bandwagon, if recent rumours are to be believed.
The latest speculation comes from Rebs Gaming (via Wccftech). He said that Halo Studios' upcoming Project Ekur, made in collaboration with Certain Affinity, had shifted from being a battle royale Halo game to an extraction shooter, since at least the summer of 2023. It has also been claimed that since then, the game has been made part of the next mainline Halo experience, so perhaps it'll just be a big multiplayer mode in the new Halo game.
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Moreover, Rebs Gaming believes that the new Halo games are going to follow a Call of Duty-like framework, with one launcher being used for the campaign, the multiplayer modes, and what could be the extraction shooter mode.
If this is true, it feels like we're still not learning the lesson from Concord and other failed live-service games. You can't just follow a trend and expect the same results as other successes. For Halo to come back as a franchise, it probably shouldn't just see what everyone else is doing and take notes.