Halo Wars 2 is an upcoming real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by 343 Industries and Creative Assembly, and published by Microsoft Studios. It is scheduled to be released in February 2017 for Microsoft Windows and the Xbox One video game console. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series in the year 2559, and is a sequel to the 2009 video game Halo Wars. The game sees the return of the human crew aboard the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire and introduces a new alien faction known as the Banished. Development of Halo Wars 2 began in 2014 and the game was announced at Gamescom in 2015.