Dave Pottinger 1Up Halo Wars Interview: This is an extensive pre-E3 interview with Designer Dave Pottinger that should be very interesting to anyone looking forward to the game. This was actually a 40 minute phone interview, transcribed almost as spoken, into about 7000 words of text. There is a lot to digest, but you can read about the trade-offs the design team has made along the way, how we tried to keep true to the Halo universe, where we had to fill in gaps, the trials of bringing RTS to the console, and much more. This is not only a good look inside the Halo Wars development, but really inside game development itself.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pager.offset=0&cId=3168633

Halo Wars at E3: Coverage of Halo Wars launched with an extensive interview with designer Dave Pottinger on cable channel G4. While Dave was answering questions, Justin Rouse was driving the demo you see. Our guys were well prepared with stuff we wanted to show, but were thrown off a bit when the G4 hosts had a list of questions and stuff they wanted to cover. Dave and Justin were able to extemporize well and accommodate G4, and we are very happy with how the presentation went. Our hosts seemed impressed, both on screen and off.

Dwayne Gravitt of our IT team got our auditorium set up so we could all catch the original G4 show as it was first broadcast. So there was a brief pause at work while most of the studio watched Dave and Justin do their thing. (And immediate cheering thereafter.)

The first day of the show was international media for us so not a lot of coverage we could see, but the second day picked up considerably. We are especially happy to read the stuff from skeptics who come away impressed. Below are links to the G4 video and other important outlet coverage already on the Internet. Our community team is trying to keep current with information appearing on Halo Wars as it pops up and provide one site from which you can link to it all, so check our site to see what other information appears in the days to come.

The G4 video interview is here:
http://e3.g4tv.com/e32008/videos/26921/Hands_On_Halo_Wars.html

The 5 Long Years video news is here:
http://www.halowars.com/Dwnloads/Movies.aspx

Excellent in-game footage from E3 is here:
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/19938
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/19939

Gametrailers in-game footage is here:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36232.html

IGN hands-on with Halo Wars is here:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/890/890357p1.html

Gamespot co-op hands-on is here:
http://e3.gamespot.com/story.html?sid=6194187

One stop shop for as much of the coverage as we can find is here:
http://www.halowars.com/

E3 Demo Stations: Here is a photo of one of our demo stations taken by Chris Rippy (Halo Wars Producer) on Monday, the day before the show opened. At this point everything is set up and running properly, ready to go. We have several of these and press people will be moving between different publisher stations throughout the show. In addition to Chris, the ES contingent to E3 is made up of three designers from the team- Dave Pottinger, Graeme Devine, and Justin Rouse. All four will be doing demonstrations at these machines, giving interviews as the opportunity arises, and helping the media reps get some hands on experience in their own 1v1 and 2v2 games.

Here is another Chris Rippy camera photo of Dave actually doing a demonstration to the media.

Halo Wars Release Date: This has been kept under wraps and is still not finalized, but at E3 we are saying we expect to see the game published in the first half of 2009. hopefully the first half of the first half .

Halo Wars Builds: For those keeping track, Sergio Tacconi just created archive build #816.

Cardboard Halo Weapons: With over 100 employees checking out the Internet now and then, some amazing stuff related to our games gets found and passed around. Check out the weapons this young man has made out of cardboard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e45J0SCXO5s&eurl=http://maxconsole.net/

Flagship Studios Closes Down: Word is going around that this studio founded in 2003 by several key people from Blizzard North (of Diablo fame) closed down recently. Their big title is Hellgate London, which must not have been a big hit. It is always disappointing to see promising studios go away. This one looked like a good bet being headed up by the creative minds behind one of the great game franchises of recent years. Maybe we’ll learn more about what went wrong. Perhaps the PC market had changed too much under them, or they just took too long to bring their game to market, or the overall Blizzard culture/support was critically important to past successes. Talent and passion are not enough in this industry. Those have to be fashioned into a strong business proposition as well. Here is what Voodoo Extreme had to say about the studio closing.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39866/Flagship-Studios-Closure-Confirmed-All-Staff-Fired-All-I-P-Lost-Updated

Hold the Eulogy for PC Gaming: Gabe Newell is the outspoken head of Valve Software, creators of the Half Life series, the Orange Box, and Steam, their digital download service. He couldn’t disagree more with those who think the PC is on its way out as a game platform and he is investing heavily in businesses aligning with that belief. Read why he maintains such a strongly favorable vision of the PC’s future in this interview with Eurogamer. I think he makes compelling points.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=160866&page=1

Final Comment on Halo Wars: I hope this photo taken by designer Graeme Devine sums up how the game did at E3. We couldn’t be happier. All the hard work to date and especially the extra time put in over the last six weeks is reflected in this achievement.

Bruce Shelley