With Microsoft rumoured to be officially announcing its Nextbox-Whatever at any moment now, internet-based rumour and speculation has had it that Halo 4 would be holding off for that instead of launching on Xbox 360.

Not so, says Halo developer, 343 Industries.

“Halo 4 will be on Xbox 360 and use a modified core of the Halo engine(s),” writes 343 Industries boss, Frank O’Connor, over on NeoGAF. “Not really a singular engine since it goes through fairly radical evolutions all the time.”

Halo 4 starts a new trilogy in the series, dubbed the “Reclaimer Trilogy”, and starts off where Halo 3 finished.

Both Master Chief and Cortana will be coming back for another tour of duty, although not much else is known about the game for now.

It’s tentatively scheduled to launch sometime in 2012, so we can probably extrapolate that the next-gen Xbox won’t be launching any time before then either. SCIENCE!

Source: NeoGAF