Halo Wars has been proceeding for months under the code name Phoenix. We have been working with the Bungie team closely to be sure that the vision for Halo Wars syncs up with their games and story. Our goal is to develop a full RTS game specifically for the X-360. We think X-360 gamers are ready for the RTS experience and the MGS leadership believes a quality RTS can expand the platform community. Our team specifically sees this as a cool challenge to take advantage of the technology, do something different, and open up a new genre to the platform.

The Halo Wars team is the fastest growing at ES right now. Much of The WarChiefs team is rolling over to it and many of our new employees are also joining. The team is being led by veteran ES producer Chris Rippy and Lead Programmer Angelo Laudon. Both have been with ES from the start, nearly 12 years ago. Angelo was Lead Programmer on Age I and Age II. The Art Lead is Mathew Goldman, an industry veteran with many titles to his credit from years at Bioware. Lead Designer is Graeme Devine, another industry veteran with 20+ years experience. We think the project is in great hands.

This game has a long way to go before being published and we won't be getting into too many specifics about it for a while. But it is being played every day now and we are feeling very good about where it is and where it is going.