I think it would be exceptionally hard to create another franchise that comes anywhere close to the level of Halo and I don't really think that there's another franchise like Halo that Microsoft could adopt right now. Halo has always brought a lot to the table and this is what I believe makes it a real console seller. Like you said, the game is accessible to pretty much any type of player which I think is a truly amazing thing. The game attracts competitive players, casual players, players interested in co-op, players interested in content creation, players interested in the story/lore, etc. I could sperg on and on about how great Halo is and how it's a one-of-a-kind series, but I'm sure you get the point. So Microsoft would need to invest a lot of time and thought into creating another franchise that has the potential to grow as big as Halo. And to be honest, I'm not sure they're able to do that.
I can agree with that. Whilst I don't think that it's entirely out of the picture to create a game of similar potential, it's something that definitely requires some hard investment to execute properly.
For example,
Fable had the potential, but the lofty promises of Molyneux ensured that the fantasy always remained out of reach with the reality of it. You might have thought, "Wow" when he talked about the idea of planting an acorn on any part of the world at any point in time and coming back later to find a tree in its place. Or how AIs would make intelligent deductions over things such as dog abandonment. Naturally this never materialised, and the games while mostly being fun (1&2), are not groundbreaking or even surprising in any sense of the word.
Another example is
Mass Effect. It had an amazing story, premise and atmosphere, but with how poorly-made
Mass Effect 3 was, much of the series felt deflated. Creating stories with overlapping amounts of potential and promise is good when you can deliver on those things, but ME3 was sorely lacking, and I say this despite enjoying it for the most part. Transitioning from the detonation of a relay to the Reaper invasion whilst completely glossing over your impending trial and how your actions could have impacted it was very rough. The universe exudes character and intrigue, but if you decide to ignore elements without an adequate reason, it's a detriment to the property as a whole.
Basically, creating a game that exceeds expectations while maintaining that kind of amazement across multiple titles without fucking up is not an easy task. In Microsoft's case, that's even harder when you have a limited stock of first-party games that can tide people over long enough for an adequate amount of time to be spent creating a good sequel.
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On a different note, did it annoy anyone else how the E3 presentation was always littered with moments where the broadcasters would speak about whatever lame Twitter posts people made during the conferences? It's comparative to how mainstream media uses it to pad out their week-long coverage of some major news event because nothing else is happening. I wouldn't think it's very disingenuous when they use it to present decent questions made to the developers, but it's just such lame filler otherwise.
