Halo Wars community to be closed

Less than two years after it was released on Xbox 360, Microsoft has announced that it is to close many of its dedicated support features for strategy title Halo Wars.

Specifically, the next title update for the game will implement measures designed to accommodate the closure of the HaloWars.com website. That also means the end of both online stat-tracking and dedicated community support.

Microsoft is now encouraging users to move over to the Halo Waypoint website.

While I know some of you will see this as bad news, it really isn’t,” a statement on HaloWars.com reads. Halo Waypoint, unlike HaloWars.com, is updated daily by the community team. We have verybig plans for Halo Waypoint, and if you’ve seenthe mobile app that we just announced, then you’llhave an idea of where we’re headed with it.

The forums will disappear and so will online stat-tracking. I know this will be rough on a lot of you, andI can promise that itwasn’t a decision made lightly.”

Any users of the current site will not be able to transfer their data over to Waypoint. Microsoft is, however, offering them a special forum avatar that won’t be available to users outside of the Halo Wars community.

HaloWars.com will be closed on December 15th.

The game has an 82 per cent average on Metacritic, making it the highest rated console RTS ever.

Ensemble, the developer that made Halo Wars was closed by Microsoft in September 2008 – five months before the game hit stores.