It's no secret that things are in a state of flux at Xbox and all of its in-house game studios, and this appears to extend to Halo Studios. Despite building excitement for Halo: Campaign Evolved, which is slated to launch in late July 2026, it seems as though projects are being cut at Halo Studios all the same. Most recently, news broke via game journalist Rebs Gaming on X that Halo Studios had officially cancelled a new Halo project known internally as Project Ekur. This information was later validated by Windows Central reporter Jez Corden, although the nature of Project Ekur is still unknown.

Currently, it seems as though Project Ekur may have been anything from an add-on for an existing Halo game to an independent extraction shooter in the Halo universe. Rebs confirmed in a reply to a commenter that project Ekur was not the Destiny-like MMORPG that has also been rumored to be in the works at Halo Studios.

The news of the canceled Halo project comes amid a shake-up at Xbox that has resulted in mass layoffs of 3,200 workers, the sale of a number of studios, and the cancelation of a handful of other games and projects at Microsoft. The Xbox layoffs have also resulted in external collateral damage at IO Interactive, where funding cuts resulted in layoffs.