Today I attended two half hour long sessions with the developers of the next two Halo games - Halo Wars and Halo 3: Recon. Both of them are working up to a climax, in the case of Ensemble Studios this will be their very last game (at least as Ensemble), and in the case of Bungie they are putting a close to Halo 3 - and perhaps it will also be the last thing make in the Halo universe for quite some time.
Halo 3: Recon is being put together by a rather small team, while Jason Jones and most of the Bungie veterans are hard at work on an original IP. The word expansion was thrown around, although it will be a standalone product - and Brian Jarrard was quick to point out that the game although slightly more tactical is still very much the kind of first person Halo experience you would expect.
The cinematics in Halo Wars blew me away, and when I said I'd love to see a CG movie with that something strange came over Graeme Devine's face as he agreed that it would indeed be nice... you know where you read it first.
Meanwhile Microsoft is assembling their own Halo team, and Jarrard knew of two former Bungie employees who had joined them. As you probably already know Kojima Productions' Ryan Payton will be there as well as Bungie's Frank O'Connor. Whatever Microsoft's Halo team is doing they will be hard pressed to improve on the climatic efforts of Ensemble Studios and Bungie as they close down and move on to greener pastures respectively.