Microsoft and 343 promised more Halo 10th anniversary festivities at this year's PAX Prime, and now we're seeing just what they meant. The official site announced today that the Seattle gaming event will host its own Halo event inside it, like a Russian nesting doll. Called "Halo Fest," it will be at the Annex 3rd Floor of the Washington Convention Center during PAX Prime, running alongside the days and times of the regular PAX event.

The announcement promises "tournaments, exclusive panels, and sweet prizes" for Halo fans. It's in honor of the 10th anniversary event this year, which has already included an update to Waypoint, a new motion comic, and new Halo Avatar duds. We've also heard rumblings of a Halo: Combat Evolved remake serving as 343's debut project. Read more »

Microsoft and 343 Industries are preparing for the 10th anniversary of Halo, and the first of undoubtedly many celebratory salvos will be coming through the Halo Waypoint hub. This Friday, Halo Waypoint will be updated with performance tweaks, a new "Compare with Friends" feature, Instant On streaming video, and two new career levels. It will also reflect your stats for Halo: Reach and allow you to launch the game from WayPoint.

In addition, on Saturday, April 23, WayPoint users will be able to watch a new motion comic called "The Mona Lisa." The comic shows the crew of the UNSC Red Horse discovering a derelict prison ship called the Mona Lisa. Prisoners are nothing if not known for their appreciation of classic art. The crew goes to investigate and, unsurprisingly, ends up battling the Covenant. This is why most people know better than to check out creepy abandoned prisons. Read more »

343 Industries and Waypoint announced in this post on the official forums that they plan to step up and maintain stat tracking for Halo Wars after all. A post on the game's official forum back in mid-November revealed the end of stat keeping as part of a larger plan to shutter HaloWars.com and migrate the remaining players to Halo Waypoint. Though the game's dedicated site will still be going away, Waypoint intends to carry on stat keeping for the game as long as possible.

They explained the change saying: Read more »

Responding to claims Ensemble Studios veteran Paul Bettner made during Game Developers Conference 2010, fellow ex-employee Ian Fischer has disputed that the now-defunct development studio "was inefficient and expensive" in an open letter.

"Ensemble Studios, while certainly fond of numerous inefficient development practices, was no costlier or less efficient than any other developer of our caliber during this period of operation," reads a portion of Fischer's rather detailed response. Read more »

With both Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires, Halo Wars) and Pandemic Studios (Mercenaries, The Saboteur) having shut down across the past year, veterans of both took the stage at Game Developers Conference 2010 to explain what went wrong.

A glitch in the Xbox Live system has seen the leaderboards for Halo Wars evaporate, and now the game's developers are unsure of whether they will ever be reconstituted.

"An Xbox LIVE technical issue wiped all Halo Wars Xbox LIVE Leaderboards earlier today," wrote Robot Entertainment on the Halo Wars site, slowly sapping the souls of several unknown gamers with each word. Read more »

Another batch of Halo Wars downloadable content is set to arrive on July 21, recreating "key turning points in the UNSC/Covenant war" across four new multiplayer maps.

Dubbed 'Historic Battles,' the pack will cost 800 Microsoft Points ($10) and contain two 1v1 maps, one 2v2 map and a 3v3 map. Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb details the maps and 100 points of achievements on his blog, though there appear to be errors.

The first batch of downloadable content for Halo Wars can now be found on Xbox Live.

Priced at 800 MS Points ($10), the "Strategic Options" add-on brings three new multiplayer modes and new achievements to Ensemble-developed Xbox 360 strategy game. Read more »

In addition to its upcoming DLC, new battlefields will also soon grace Ensemble's RTS Halo Wars.

Joystiq noticed that the names of three upcoming maps--Barrens (1v1), Blood River (1v1) and Memorial Basin (2v2)--are mentioned in the title's in-game news crawl. Read more »

While Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios is no more, the studio's legacy lives on through a variety of spin-off studios.

One of those, Robot Entertainment, has been working with Microsoft to develop "additional content" for the Xbox 360 strategy game.

Now, Microsoft has revealed the first details on that additional content in the form of the "Strategic Options" downloadable add-on that's due out in the "coming weeks." Read more »

Offering a glimpse into the fascinating world of game sales, research group NPD has released its take on the software and hardware sales in the US over 3/1/09 to 4/4/09.

New releases dominated the software chart, with Resident Evil 5 surpassing 1.5 million units thanks to a dual-platform debut, and Halo Wars racking up an impressive 639K.

Meanwhile, Nintendo continued its dominance of hardware sales charts. Read more »

In the three or so weeks since Halo Wars launched, the Xbox 360 strategy game has sold over one million copies worldwide, publisher Microsoft announced today.

That makes it "the best selling real-time strategy game on any current generation console," according to Microsoft's claims. The final game from Ensemble Studios, Halo Wars hit Asia on February 26, Europe on February 27, and North America on March 3. Read more »

As this trailer makes abundantly clear, Halo Wars isn't your standard Halo game. Not only does it take place about 20 years before those other Halo games, but instead of merely shooting aliens, you're commanding the troops from a birds-eye view.

Developed by now-closed Ensemble Studios, Halo Wars hits Xbox 360 tomorrow.

Halo Wars developers Ensemble make their case for Halo Wars in this newly-released developer diary. Also included: the designers' favorite strategies.

The Xbox 360 RTS hits stores on March 3.

Following its unofficial reveal last week, Robot Entertainment today announced itself to the world, confirming that the independent studio is comprised of Ensemble veterans.