One of the industry’s best upcoming FPS studios, Gearbox Software has been long rumoured to be working on a secret project that is “bigger” than anything they’ve ever tried. Since this is the team that made the entire Brothers in Arms series, the Halo PC port and many awesome expansions of Half-Life, this is something.

Rumour has it that they’re working on nothing but a Halo 4. Apparently the fight isn’t quite finished. Supposedly, the game is in development for a next-generation Xbox console. It should be noted that while we don’t have any announcements of a new console generation, we haven’t even heard talks about anything like that.

The rumour comes from the Official XBox Magazine, and there doesn’t seem to be any hard verification. Still, it doesn’t seem unbelievable or contradictory. Gearbox only has one product on their plate, Borderlands and Bungie announced that they’re done with the Halo franchise.

In any case, Microsoft milking out the Halo franchise definitely isn’t news, what will all that promotion during Halo 3’s launch. What is news is the weird, outlandish rumour. So is Microsoft working on a next-gen Xbox? How powerful is it? Is Gearbox actually working on a sequel to Halo 3? Will it come anytime before 2015? Questions galore.

We have no doubt that Microsoft has an answer to them all. ‘Microsoft does not respond to rumors’ or some such.