Microsoft must still be pretty fond of the Xbox's flagship game series, Halo, since the company keeps naming unrelated things after it.
The latest Microsoft advancement to be codenamed after Halo is "Threshold," the next big Windows update that ZDNet says will actually arrive simultaneously on PCs, tablets, smartphones and Xbox One consoles in spring 2015.
Threshold is derived from the name of the planet being orbited by the Halo superstructure in the original 2001 game, Halo: Combat Evolved.
The term joins "Cortana," a sassy AI character from the game series and a possible codename for Microsoft's answer to Siri in the ranks of titles the company has seeminly borrowed from Halo.
Approaching the threshold
The name Threshold is an umbrella term, sources said, encompassing similar updates to the Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox One operating systems.
Threshold will reportedly serve to further unify all of Microsoft's device ecosystems.
It's already been reported that the company is working on a unified app store, and Microsoft engineers are supposedly tinkering to turn development tools for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox One more like one another.
With Threshold, Microsoft hopes to unify these systems even further by promoting the same "high-value activities" (things like Bing and Microsoft Office) across them all.
However, before that can happen Microsoft is expected to release more minor updates to Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8, bringing the latter up to Windows Phone 8.1.
