Microsoft: One Halo game every three years "probably not frequent enough"

Slow and steady wins the race, said Bungie.

Microsoft and 343 Industries, however, have other plans.

"There's no explicit strategy that says we're to ship a Halo game every year. I will say I think one Halo game every three years -- which was kind of our old cadence – is probably not frequent enough," Microsoft Game Studios Corporate VP Phil Spencer told IGN.

"We're coming up on, what, next year is the 10th anniversary. You watch the change in gamers in 10 years. The percentage of players who are playing Reach that were I'll say not old enough to play Halo 1 at the time, 10 years is a long time between launches," he continued.

"We definitely think about a more persistent Halo engagement for customers and not going dark for two years, and Live helps obviously with multiplayer to keep people engaged."

Shooter franchise so gigantic it probably has tiny men climbing its beanstalk to steal its geese? Xbox Live emphasis? Frequent releases? Could Microsoft be taking more than a few pages from Call of Duty's book? Spencer certainly made it sound that way, saying that Kotick and co. turned his cold cynicism toward annual releases into genuine respect.

So, were you - through methods we can't claim to comprehend - behind roughly half of those 2300 years of Halo: Reach playtime? Then don't worry, because your next Halo fix is probably just around the corner.