The buzz has died down a bit, but there are still a few sites catching up with the X06 Halo Wars bombshell. The latest is the BBC's site, which quoted Bungie's Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard as well as HBO's own fansite editor, Claude "Louis Wu" Errera.

As for why a Halo RTS by Ensemble, Sketch put it nicely:

"Halo started as an RTS. Would the Bungie team love to do one themselves? Possibly.

"We are not focused on that. We've got a lot of work to do on Halo 3 and a trilogy to finish."

As for Wu, he was cautiously optimistic. Or optimistically cautious, depending:

"The entire team has been working on Halo games since 1998 and they are probably tired of it. But there are still stories to tell."

I suppose if one works on Halo games long enough, Pimps at Sea starts to look like a really good idea.