New dev working on Halo Wars DLC

Robot Entertainment, a new Texan game developer created by many of the original founders of Ensemble Studios, has confirmed that it is working on downloadable content for Halo Wars.

The newly minted company, headed up by Ensemble founder Tony Goodman, will also "support online gaming and community for both Age of Empires and Halo Wars", according to its press release.

"Additionally, Robot is developing its own original IP." This has led to speculation that an unannounced, former Ensemble project has made the transition as well, although there's nothing to suggest that in Robot's press release.

"The video game industry is in a state of upheaval," Goodman said, "not just games, but the entire landscape. Everything is changing: where we buy games, how we buy games, how much we pay, how long we play, who we play them with.

"As a fast-moving independent team of game developers, industry leaders and market experts, Robot Entertainment is ideally positioned to play a transformative role in the industry's future."

The news that Robot will support Halo Wars expands on comments made by Microsoft-based producer Jason Pace in an interview with Eurogamer last month.

"Ensemble is, as I'm sure you know, forming a new company, and they will be helping us support the title moving forward, so: bug patches, any kind of fixes - we'll have all those folks available to work on it," he said, so we can probably also expect our old euphemistic friends the 'title updates' to venture forth from Robot as well.

In the aftermath of Ensemble's closure, announced last September, Microsoft quickly added that it still owned the Age of Empires IP, traditionally developed by Ensemble. Whether Robot's involvement with that goes beyond "online gaming and community" support remains to be seen.