Halo Wars dev moves to Appleâ??s iPhone group

The lead designer at now-defunct developer Ensemble Studios has landed a job at Apple’s iPhone group.

The once Microsoft-owned Ensemble discovered in September last year that the developer was set to close down, despite over a decade of success from the Age of Empires franchise. Halo Wars was to be the company’s last project.

It has now emerged that Ensemble’s lead designer on Halo Wars – Graeme Devine – has moved to Microsoft’s PC rival Apple to work at the firm’s iPhone group.

The news was made public on Devine’s Twitter account, where the designer confirmed the news to Kotaku’s Brain Crecente.

Devine’s new role at Apple is unknown, but likely to be involved in game software due to his enviable experience in the sector, and indeed his Twitter account which implies he’s still engulfed in the game business.

On June 5 he wrote “I just make games, you know”, while one day later he said “getting ready for WWDC”, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and an event which could see the arrival of a new edition to the iPhone.

The iPhone has in recent times emerged as a considerable games device, with thousands of game apps created for it. Dedicated software developers are beginning to take the device more seriously; Capcom will be releasing over ten iPhone games before March 2010.

And yet Apple still doesn’t have its own in-house game company. This may now have changed with Devine’s appointment.