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."
Basically the truth to this is that MS aren't worried about the competition for this year. They have pretty much nailed down Fall 2008 with their big 3 (Gears 2, Fable 2, Banjo 3). Instead they will save Halo Wars and Alan Wake for 2009 when Sony could potentially release FF13 and God of War 3.
If its not ready then its not ready. Theres no need for microsoft to rush such a big game, especially as the xbox 360 already have such a good line up for the rest of this year.
To be honest, I forgot about this game, after hearing about GTA4, Force Unleashed, Gears 2, this totally slipped my mind. If it comes out next year, then it's next year. I think if they release too many games at the same time, then good games could actually be ignored accidentally.
Holding back a game to polish it I don't believe is failing to deliver on promises, especially if the promise was a great game, taking the time to deliver it is more important to me than rushing it to stick to a schedule.
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