Halo: What Microsoft should do next

Ten new Halo game ideas we'd love to see.

With Bungie now an independent studio, the Halo franchise is in the hands of the recently founded Halo Studio, part of Microsoft Game Studios. We've seen the company take Halo on its first tentative footsteps beyond the comfort of the Bungie FPS with console RTS Halo Wars, for many a surprising choice, and Halo 3: ODST is inbound this Christmas, but what can Halo fans expect from Halo Studio in 2010 and beyond? Here, in our Halo wish list, we speculate on the future of gaming's most famous world saver.

Halo Wars on PC

Halo Wars was great, indeed it's the best RTS on a console, but we couldn't help but think, as we worked our way through its compelling campaign, that it would have been better on PC. We're sure a reworked version, with more units, increased strategic depth and perhaps the addition of a Covenant campaign would be well received by PC fans. We know Microsoft doesn't publish many PC games these days, but it will have watched with interest the excellent sales of high-profile PC-exclusive RTSs Empire: Total War (Creative Assembly) and Dawn of War II (Relic Entertainment). Games for Windows' Dave Luehmann recently told Gamasutra that the company has "several titles in development right now, both internally developed and with external partners" and is "putting more money into Windows games than we have in quite a while". Could some of that money be going towards Robot Entertainment, formed out of the ashes of Ensemble's closure and already confirmed to be continuing work on Halo Wars? We certainly hope so.

Halo Wars 2

Halo Wars sales have topped one million, therefore, there will be a sequel. But what do we want from it? A playable Covenant campaign is a must, as is another playable faction, whether it's the Flood or something else. We also want better graphics, more units and maybe, just maybe, the appearance of a certain Master Chief. Could Robot Entertainment be working on a follow-up? Fingers crossed.