Franchise director Frank O'Connor says development on upcoming sci-fi shooter is finished, game now headed to Microsoft certification.

New Halo developer 343 Industries has completed its first original Halo game. Halo franchise director Frank O'Connor said today during a press event in London (attended by Videogamer) that development on Halo 4 has been completed ahead of the game's launch exclusively on Xbox 360 November 6.

Development has wrapped on one of this fall's blockbusters.

"We had a big piece of news yesterday back in the office, which is that the game is literally finished at this point," he said. "They are handing it off through the various certification processes and that, and we're done. It's been three years of incredibly hard work by about 300 people."

At a North America press event two weeks ago, O'Connor said Halo 4 was 99 percent complete, adding that the team was cleaning out the game's remaining bugs.

Halo 4 is the first numbered entry in the series developed outside of Bungie Studios, which officially handed the franchise reigns to 343 Industries on March 31, 2012. It is a direct sequel to 2007's Halo 3, picking up four years after the events of that game.

At least two more core installments--Halo 5 and Halo 6--will follow as part of the new Reclaimer Trilogy. It is rumored that the next Halo game will arrive on a future Microsoft platform, as the company is openly hiring staffers to create next-generation visuals and infrastructure to "drive the future of Halo."

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