I en intervju med Microsoft Game Studios-bossen Phil Spencer i Official Xbox Magazine säger han självkritiskt att Microsoft tappade fokus för Halo-serien med Halo 3: ODST och Halo: Reach. Något han säger att man satsar på att nu åtgärda med Halo 4.
"We kind of lost our way a little bit, I'll say. And that's why I wanted to make sure that at the unveiling of Halo 4, you knew you were playing Master Chief, that John was back. Because Master Chief is the John Wayne character of that universe, and that's who you want to play.", säger Spencer.
Spencer fortsätter sitt resonemang: "If you were a Halo fan for Halo 1, 2 and 3, Reach made sense to you, but fundamentally there are a ton of players on our box right now that didn't start with Halo 1. What we said was: ‘let's get back to what Halo is about'."
Därmed inte sagt att Halo: Reach skulle vara något dåligt spel, enligt Spencer: "I loved Reach as a game - as a fan of the fiction, I totally love the story in Reach, Reach is one of the best stories in the Halo universe. But it made more sense to you if you were a Halo fan. If you were new to Xbox 360, 360's where you started playing on Xbox, you understood what Halo 3 was. ODST and Reach, maybe you weren't as centred."