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Halo Wars teaser website goes live [Update]

A new website for Halo Wars, the 2009 Halo-centered RTS, has suddenly gone live. And it's counting down to something. (Update: Or maybe not. Microsoft has confirmed this is false.)

Ozzie Mejia

November 14, 2014 11:09 AM

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Update 2: Microsoft has issued the following statement. "343 Industries and Microsoft Studios have no association with the website ‘thehalowars.com’ and we’re currently working with our legal team to have it taken down. Any information listed there should be considered false."

Update: PR representatives for Microsoft are just as surprised by this Halo Wars site as anybody else. Their responses point to this new site being a fake. But that's an awfully well-made fake, isn't it?

Original story: Travel back in time to 2009, where Ensemble Studios took the Halo universe and created a pretty competent console real-time strategy game called Halo Wars. Five years later, it looks like the spin-off series may be coming back.

A new Halo Wars website is up now. It has a countdown timer that's set to expire at 12am PST on Wednesday, December 17. The hashtag "#SPIRITOFFIRE" can be seen at the bottom and staying on the website for about a minute will prompt a voice to say, "Captain, wake up! Something has happened!"

This all seems to point to a second installment of Halo Wars, but we'll know for sure on December 17. However, it should be noted that Segment Next has done some digging and may have uncovered this to be a giant hoax. Shacknews is contacting Microsoft for more details. Stay tuned.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?