Halo Wars sequel hopes dashed by developer 343

Halo Wars 2 developer 343 has announced that it is walking away from further development on the RTS game, and there are no plans for a sequel.

Late yesterday evening, a blog post on the Halo Waypoint contained a section dedicated to Halo Wars 2, as we approach the fourth anniversary of the game later this month. With development wrapping up on Halo: The Master Chief Collection updates on PC, fans have been wondering if 343 would return to updating Halo Wars 2, and the developer has a very simple answer to that: unfortunately not.

"It’s not always easy to be open and transparent – particularly when we expect it’s not an answer the community wants to hear – but we want to give it to you straight: 343 Industries has no current plans for further Halo Wars 2 work including content updates, balance patches, bringing the title to other platforms, or a new game in the series," the blog post from 343 reads.

"As of today, there is no plan for the development team to re-engage with Halo Wars 2 and we aren’t working on a new game in the series at this time," the post continues. In short, although the PC updates might be wrapping up for The Master Chief collection, 343 is still incredibly busy, with Halo Infinite set to launch later this year, and "no shortage" of update ideas planned for The Master Chief Collection at some point in the future.

It's a shame, but the blog post does drop the old "never say never," writing that "if you told me back in the day that the totality of MCC would land on Steam or Halo 3 would get content updates 14 years after launch, I’d never have believed it and yet here we are." Halo Wars as a franchise is undoubtedly on the back burner for 343 right now, especially gearing up for Master Chief's next-gen debut later this year.

For a full list of all the games coming to Microsoft's more powerful next-gen console at some point in the future, head over to our upcoming Xbox Series X games guide for more.