Microsoft Surprises Gamescom by Announcing Halo Wars 2

Microsoft seems ready to commit to its past as it continued reviving old franchises during Gamescom 2015 Aug. 4.

After presenters gave plenty of space to a new Forza game, a new Rainbow Six game and a new Crackdown game at the Xbox One press conference, Xbox head Phil Spencer gave a 'one more thing' to the audience in the form of announcing a sequel to 2009's Halo Wars.

If you don't remember Halo Wars, we'll forgive you. It was an odd duck of a real-time strategy game, a la StarCraft or Age of Empires. In fact, the original game was developed by Ensemble Studios, creator of the Age of Empires series.

The original Halo Wars was a cult fan favorite and remains highly regarded in certain circles, though it never reached the sales numbers of traditional FPS Halo games.

Ensemble will not develop this sequel, instead it's being handled by 343 Industries, who took over the Halo franchise after creator studio Bungie ended their exclusivity deal with Microsoft, and British game devleloper Creative Assembly, responsible for the very many Total War games.