Amidst the avalanche of news from Microsoft's mega event X06, corporate kingpin Peter Moore snuck in a teaser at the last second of Microsoft's opening press conference. Just a few seconds of video announced that Ensemble Studios (infamous for the Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games) has commenced work on Halo Wars, an RTS cut from Halo cloth.
While only announced for the Xbox 360, Halo Wars is expected to make the jump to Microsoft's new Vista operating system. Currently, however, it appears that only 360 owners will be fortunate enough to bask in the glow the new Halo game.
There are a few scant details on theHalo Wars official site, but here are a few of our favorite snippets from the game's FAQ:
"Halo Wars takes place before Halo 1 during the UNSC's first deadly encounters with the Covenant."
"Players will lead the crew of the UNSC's 'Spirit of Fire' from initial skirmishes to an all out war against the evil Covenant."
"Warthogs are cool. Scorpions are cool. Controlling lots of Warthogs and Scorpions and sending them into battle is really, really cool."
"Halo Wars was created for the Xbox 360 from the ground up, which meant we didn't have to make compromises or shoe-horn in artifacts from a Windows PC game. We were able to take all the best aspects of RTS games, make them work perfectly on the Xbox 360, and exclude the rest."
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