Microsoft Job Postings Suggest Upcoming RTS

Microsoft has an interesting surprise up its sleeve. According to a recent job posting, which is for a Senior Software Engineer for Microsoft's Decisive Games Studios, Microsoft suggests that there is indeed an RTS in the works for both the Xbox One and PC. However, what game it could be has not been specified. There is currently speculation that the RTS could be a new entry in Halo Wars or Age of Empires.

To quote the listing, "The Decisive Games team is focused on world class strategy game development, and is building a studio that will bring the next installment in a beloved strategy game franchise to the next generation of gamers around the world." The job requirements are "familiarity with DirectX 11 or Xbox 360 / Xbox One rendering APIs."

This is when we can speculate that the game could be part of the Halo universe or the Age of Empires. However, my guess is leaning toward Age of Empires, because the listing suggested "a beloved strategy game franchise." And as far as I recall, Halo Wars is the only RTS game in the series.

There is a second job posting that indicates that the game will have online multiplayer, "As a senior client-server network engineer you will be expected to contribute to solving a range of engineering problems, but your focus will be on leading the networking and multiplayer aspects of gameplay, including both the real-time gameplay networking solution as well as supporting out-of-band systems such as matchmaking and grouping." The job also requires experience with Xbox Live, the game definitely seems to hit the Microsoft Consoles.

So what do you believe? Will the unannounced RTS game be related to Age of Empires, Halo Wars, or something completely different?