IGN posted an article with Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer. In it among other things he talks about Halo Wars and the possibility of a sequel to the RTS game. Below is a direct copy/paste of the Halo portion of the article.
“I’m a big fan of Halo Wars,” Spencer said when asked about the Xbox 360 real-time strategy game. Since its launch in 2009, the strategy spin-off hasn’t been heard from again. It was never released on PC (despite seemingly being a perfect fit) and developer Ensemble Studios shut down following the game’s completion. The studio’s founder revealed last year that Bungie wasn’t pleased with “the whoring out of [its] franchise.” But years have now passed and Bungie is no longer owned by Microsoft, so what’s the status of Halo Wars?
“And especially now, when I think about some of the capability — you might roll your eyes at this — but when I think about some voice and other things that you could add to that, that’s the kind of gameplay that I think would be great in those scenarios. And also a game that maybe I could play on multiple devices: I could play on Windows as well, I could play on console, because it has that gameplay that lends itself so well to that. So I suspect you’ll see us do something with…they’re kind of busy right now at 343, which is good, we’re really happy with what they’re working on. But I think there is opportunity for us to do something more with that franchise and Bonnie, Kiki [Wolfkill, 343 executive producer], and Josh [Holmes, creative director] are doing a great job in thinking holistically about the Halo franchise.”
As for who would develop such a game, IGN mentioned Robot Entertainment, the Ages of Empires Online and Orcs Must Die developer that was founded by former Ensemble employees. Spencer didn’t seem so sure that’s the direction that Microsoft would go in, though. “I haven’t talked to [Robot Entertainment] in a while,” he said. “In fact, I’m not sure what the status of that studio is. If we were going to do something we’d either have to think about doing it internally or finding a good RTS developer to help. There aren’t a lot of great RTS developers out there anymore. We’d want to do a great job with it.”
HFFL: Now this is some interesting news. Personally, while I haven’t gotten all of the achievements in Halo Wars, I’d still LOVE to see a sequel. For one, the thought of the Spirit of Fire returning after so long away is exhilarating! Even if this wasn’t the approach made, still a new Halo Wars I’m pretty sure would be welcomed.
I see the possibility of Spartan Ops transitioning to this. Imagine also being able to take over factions such as UNSC, Arbiter’s Covenant, Jul M’Dama’s Storm Faction, Didact/Prometheans, Flood, Brutes and maybe even Insurrectionists?? WOW!
Thanks to HaloBungie.org for tweeting this out.
-Sal
I was never really one for strategy games until Halo wars which in my opinion, put a rather interesting spin on the otherwise generally FPS nature of the Halo series.