14 DAY TRIAL // A sequel to the Halo Wars real time strategy game, with support for the Kinect motion sensor, could actually work, at least according to the creative director of 343 Industries, Microsoft's new Halo studio.
Microsoft experimented a lot with its Halo franchise, originally developed by Bungie, and the Halo Wars RTS title was one of those "successful" experiments, according to Frank O'Connor, the director of 343 Industries.
"The funny thing about Halo Wars is it actually beat our sales forecasts, so it was a bigger success than we expected," he said. "It was a big critical success and it's still the number one selling RTS on consoles this generation."
Halo Wars was the last project for Microsoft's own Ensemble team, which previously worked on hit franchise Age of Empires, before it was disbanded.
Given its success, O'Connor doesn't exclude the possibility of a sequel to it, probably using the Kinect motion sensor.
"In that regard it was a huge success but is the will to do a sequel there? Who knows. We could do something that works on Kinect, for example. There's no will against it but we're not working on it right now."
We've already seen Kinect demoed with other strategy games like Ubisoft's RUSE, so the idea isn't that unlikely.
O'Connor also admitted that Microsoft and 343 Industries have made plenty of other experiments with the franchise, and Halo Wars is an example of a successful one done right.
More experiments will follow, according to the creative director, but they're still shrouded in a veil of secrecy.
The latest project rumored to be development at 343 is a high-definition remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved.
The issue of the game was carefully avoided by O'Connor last week during his panel at the Game Developers Conference, but it's still a possibility.