Halo Wars "not ready to show," says Microsoft

There's a solid line-up of first-party Xbox 360 titles on show at Microsoft's spring media summit, but one notable no-show is Ensemble's Halo Wars, which was originally due to be shown at the San Francisco event.

So where is it? We asked Microsoft Game Studios boss Shane Kim: "We're not showing Halo Wars here today because we wanted to focus on these titles," he said. "When we show titles we want to show them when they are ready. We've learned that from a few games we showed too early, like Too Human.

"I'm excited with the progress we've made, Halo Wars is a lot of fun to play but it's not ready to show yet," he added, kick-starting speculation that the 360 strategy-em-up might slip into 2009.

Hold on a minute, we hear you crying, didn't Microsoft demo the game to us at Games Convention last August? "Yes, but in a controlled fashion," says Kim.

"Here we wanted to do more hands-on time and Halo wars isn't ready. And I think you'll see when we show it again, it's evolved a fair amount. And it's a mix of multiplayer and single-player and we want to show them at the same time."

"The same goes for Alan Wake," he added. "We're managing that very carefully with Remedy."

Courtesy of CVG.

May 14, 2008