14 DAY TRIAL // 343 Industry and Microsoft have decided that they will continue to offer online stat tracking for those who are still playing Halo Wars, despite an initial announcement that said integration with the Halo Waypoint forum would mean that stats would be wiped out and that tracking would no longer be offered.
An official statement from 343 Industries reads, “Waypoint and 343 Industries were always uncomfortable with the idea of taking stat-tracking offline, even though the technical and logistical problems presented made sense”.
It goes on to say, “The argument that it was a small and shrinking population didn't do much to quell the reaction of both Halo Wars fans and Halo FPS fans who were concerned about the future of other Halo titles, and we decided that the current plan of action was not in line with how we have always intended to support Halo games and the Halo franchise in general.”
343 Industries did not say for how much longer it plans to support the tracking, but it could be extending it for now just to ward off any negative publicity coming from the community to quietly eliminate tracking further down the line.
The merger between the original Halo Wars forums and the Waypoint concept will go ahead as planned on December 15.
On the same date, Halo Wars is also set to receive a new title update which will fix some unspecified issues.
Halo Wars was the last real time strategy title developed by Ensemble Studios before they were shut down, and was launched in early 2009.
Despite being a strategy game and coming exclusively to the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, Halo Wars has managed to sell more than 1 million units in about two months.
Reviewers also praised the game for how well it integrated into the Halo universe, but also criticized it for the lack of a Covenant campaign.
It's not clear how many players are still playing Halo Wars and the moment.