I heard the opposite.

Nice pics ^^

Awesome pics, its already the best looking RTS ever, lets hope it plays as good as it looks :D

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

Pre-E3 Interview. Good read, and brand new screens too. Game sounds amazing, and looks amazing too.

This is from the gamepro coverage
We picked up an Xbox 360 controller to play a round of four-player Team Skirmish. Though the game was far from complete, it was already obvious that Ensemble's attention to detail is paying off. We found that the basics of Halo Wars take about 30 seconds to grasp, and require the use of only a few key buttons. The interface in Halo Wars feels simple and natural: the left analog stick moves the camera, a button tap will select units or buildings, and holding the A button and "painting" the crowd will select all nearby units. When you're ready to deliver a crushing offensive blow to your enemy, you can tap the Left Bumper to select all of your units at once. Easy! A simple radial menu system keeps your base-building activities simple and streamlined, allowing you to quickly queue up multiple units or structures for rapid deployment. Multi-tasking is easy too, thanks to a directional pad shortcut that will instantly jump you from the field back to your base.From the Pre-e3 interview:

We actually have enjoyed embracing the limitations of the console controller, which just means you can't have as much in the game as you can on a PC. On a PC, it's hard to resist, "Well we've got hotkeys; what's one more hotkey?" On a console controller, you can't really invent more buttons. There's only so many ways you can push a button, and we've actually been recently trying to take out some of the alternate button configurations to pare the game down even more, and get it to be something that's fast, that's quick, that gets an adrenaline kind of punch-counterpunch thing -- which suits the console market too, so getting something that you can play in 15 minutes and have a lot of fun. It's high-paced, high action right from the start.

That's an important thing that I don't think all the other console games -- or, console RTS ports -- have really nailed because they've been ports. And building something from the ground up, for the console, lets us shed some of the conventions that have gotten in the way for a couple of the last rounds of at least our games on the PC.Dude, its ensemble studios. Need I say more? Yes, all those other RTS are amazing as well, but this is bound to be really good.

I heard some really bad impressions from the alpha build, hopefully they improved a lot of stuff since then. Anyway, we'll see the demo on monday, so no need to speculate at this point.

Realtime gameplay video, TEH HOTNESS! Looks fabulous!

http://www.xboxfront.de/news-1188-12483-Halo_Wars....

Covenant playable in Halo Wars-

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/16/covenant-playabl...