Microsoft Vancouver renamed Black Tusk Studios, seeking to double staff by year's end for "next big entertainment franchise."

Halo may not be Microsoft's tent-pole franchise forever. Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver has been rebranded Black Tusk Studios, and has received the go-ahead to get to work on "the next Halo."

"What that means is we are working on Microsoft's next big entertainment franchise," studio manager Mike Crump told the Vancouver Sun. "We're not working on an existing franchise, we're looking to build the next Halo here in Vancouver, for example, which is really exciting. We are building something from the ground up."

This news comes just months after Microsoft officially halted development on two games (Microsoft Flight and Project Columbia) at the company's Vancouver outfit and laid off a small number of employees.

To create its new game, Black Tusk Studios is seeking to double its staff in the next year from 55 to over 100. It is not clear just what the company is making, though a report from May 2011 indicated the firm was at work on a AAA Kinect-enabled shooter.

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