Ensemble involved in Halo Wars' future

Microsoft Game Studios has a "lot of ideas" for future Halo Wars content, and said that the new studio created by former Ensemble employees will help.

"Ensemble is, as I'm sure you know, forming a new company, and they will be helping us support the title moving forward, so: bug patches, any kind of fixes - we'll have all those folks available to work on it," Jason Pace, lead producer for Halo wars and MGS overseer of the Halo franchise, told Eurogamer.

"As a studio right now, we're talking about what we'd like to do to carry this game forward. We're really excited about this game. We obviously have a lot of ideas of areas we'd like to go. We haven't committed to anything yet, but I believe you'll probably be hearing something soon."

Apparently there were "dozens and dozens" of features that didn't make the final cut; the sort of things you might want to do while playing Halo Wars but can't.

"And those kind of things, without mentioning anything specific, are always the kinds of things that we would be looking at to enhance the game moving forward," said Pace.

He went on to talk about the future of Halo Wars, insisting there is one and that this IP is just as strong and important as any of the Bungie shooters.

"I would not be able to comment on that now, but I can tell you from the perspective of the franchise that we're very excited about all of the potential that it has," added Pace when asked about a sequel.

"Halo Wars is a triple-A title for the [Halo] franchise. The way we conceive it is absolutely on par with one of the first-person shooter games. And so we're very much interested in how, and in what ways, we carry the entire franchise forward - including Halo Wars as a title. So definitely we're thinking a lot about that."

And that future might still include Ensemble, despite the apparent lack of faith Microsoft has about the value of the RTS genre as part of future financial plans.

"I can tell you right now that we are really interested in continuing our relationship with Ensemble [the new studio]. We don't have anything finalised that I can discuss, but certainly that is something we'd love to continue if possible," said Pace.

"Obviously what's happened with Ensemble has presented a new set of circumstances for us to think about. But that certainly hasn't altered what we'd like to do in the future with the title at all."

Microsoft still owns the rights to Age of Empires, mind you, and is apparently "very excited about the future potential" of the IP.

Is Age of Empires 4 the new game MGS and 'Ensemble MKII' will collaborate on? "That I can't comment on," said Pace.