Some time in 2008, there'll be a spin-off to Bungies Halo. Which takes a lot of elements from the original to the small scale – and it's supposed to be a Xbox 360 exclusive title.

Graeme Devine (pictured above), lead designer at Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires) didn't give in, even though we asked over and over again: „No, Halo Wars is not planned for a PC release. We concentrate on the console version and reinvented the controls, so that you can finally play a RTS perfectly on consoles!“ Even though this doesn't mean that the game will never see the light on the PC, we're somewhat disappointed, because Halo Wars is an interesting title to look out for.

The story is set 20 years prior to what happened in Halo 1, when the humans were still convinced that they could cope with the Covenant by casual means. Right from the beginning, you'll notice the highly detailed graphics, which look as good as in Halo 3. Just zoomed out, more soldiers, vehicles and jets. We start off in a human base, with realistic scale and accordingly huge vehicle factories. Idle soldiers are, driven by a Sergeant, doing push-ups and a Warthog jeep passes by. Just like in the original Halo, Warthogs are the silent favorites for gamers: They lean physically correct into curves and are shaken by bumps in the ground. The coolest thing being, to drive them directly into Covenant crowds.

The actually quite impressive arsenal of ground and air units remains the same and has a few new entries. Like Swift gliders called Hawks and flak-tanks called Wolverines. But the Covenant have, compared to the known units, stacked up as well: There's the giant, spider-like Scarab which shoots a green beam of devastating power into a crowd of human soldiers. Or at least until Graeme Devine requests an orbital bombardment from the Spirit of Fire.

The Spirit of Fire is the invisible, yet always present source for reinforcements: Ensemble Studios doesn't want to abandon the resource management of the game, „but we also don't want you to dig in the dirt“, adds Devine. So, no collecting of resources. The Master Chief will not, in contrast to the shooter, be able to snipe single units from vehicles and take over the wheel though: „We want to maintain the overview in fights“, says Devine. „Which is why plasma shots are always from the covenant and units are colored accordingly as well.“

The controls are very smart indeed: The A button selects a troop, X sends it to a certain location. Keeping the A button pressed, marks all units of the same type. Instead of, as PC users usually do it, drawing a square around units to select them, the huge cursor serves that purpose. All construction and research activities take place in a separate screen, while the game pauses.

Even though Halo Wars in very early stages, it doesn't fail to impress us. Shortly after the presentation we ran into Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President for Xbox 360 and Games for Windows at Microsoft. As he told us, Halo Wars should especially interest German as well as other European gamers and draw them to the Xbox 360 platform.