http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_in...tory=20167
Quote:"Microsoft has decided to close Ensemble Studios following the completion of Halo Wars. After the closure, the Ensemble leadership team will form a new studio and has agreed to provide ongoing support for Halo Wars as well as work on other projects with Microsoft Game Studios.
The team at Ensemble has made invaluable contributions to the games industry with their Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games and with the highly anticipated release of Halo Wars. This decision does not reflect at all on Ensemble's talent or the quality of Halo Wars. in fact, many people who have had a chance to test drive Halo Wars agree that it is on track to being a fantastic game.
This was a fiscally-rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth path. While the decision to dissolve Ensemble was not an easy one, Microsoft is working to place as many Ensemble employees who do not move to the newly formed studio into open positions within Microsoft as possible.
As to our overall strategy at MGS, it remains the same. We are committed to growing MGS with world-class talent both internally and with our external partners around the globe. We have recently added some well-known developers to our team and will continue growing the team.
We're particularly excited about the titles we have in the pipeline and continue to evaluate additional opportunities to bring incredible games to life with the industry's best. Our investment in games has never been greater than it is today.
Very bad news, even if there is some kind of successor studio coming... Ensemble was a pretty good studio. I really liked Age of Empires I and II, both are great games. Age of Mythology wasn't quite as good, but from what I've heard AoEIII is better again. But now Microsoft killed it, and I'm sure that not everyone from the orginal studio will be part of the new one...
It was already bad enough to see them stuck doing a console game, but now they're shut down entirely? Why not just let them make PC games again... well, we'll see what they make next.
Yeah that really sucks. They pull them away from their famed franchise to spend years working on a Halo RTS, on a console no less, and then just fire everyone out of the blue.
Apparently Microsoft wants to take up EA's old mantle. :/
I liked the first two Age of empires RTS games, Ultimately they sagged in innovation department , Besides AOE I cant think of any other successful series of games by Ensemble.
They faced stiff competition in the RTS department, Far more then when they started. AOE III just didn't really blow me away all that much, SC and C&C are hard to top.
It seemed to me that they were just borrowing off of other popular games in their last batch of material,AOM is like warcraft III crossed with AOE, Some aspects I liked such as the customized tech tree for myth units, AOM just didn't suck me in like Warcraft III did.
Yeah, as I said, I think AoEII was their best game... and even there, though it was great, it was nowhere near the leap up of, say, one Blizzard game to the next. It was a comparatively small improvement. Still, the first two AoE games were great RTSes, so I'm sad to see them go... even if AoE I annoyed me immensely by having triremes fight eachother by shooting giant catapult or ballista bolts at eachother. So ridiculously unhistorical... trireme fights were mostly fought with ramming, not archery. I know that would be harder to model, but it'd have been worth it I think... oh well.
(And why can't you do things like put troops on walls? It's such an obvious feature the games should have had!)
But anyway, good games. Hopefully this new studio can be as good.
Quote:Apparently Microsoft wants to take up EA's old mantle. :/
Every studio does this kind of thing on and off... they all have. Activision, Ubisoft, Midway, EA, Microsoft, etc, etc... all of them.
I can certainly understand why he's angry, he should be.
http://www.ensemblestudios.com/blogs/bsh...osing.aspx
Quote:Bruce Shelley
Ensemble Studios Closing
Ensemble Studios Closing: I have mentioned with regret the closing of several quality game studios over the past several years but I never considered that ES would join the list. Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.
A senior executive of MGS addressed the studio in early September and gave us the news. He did not go into a lot of detail about why, but basically the decision, as I understand it, was based on several major factors. First, they want to divert the headcount tied up in ES and the costs that are expected to be required to run ES for the next few years into other projects. Second, it sounded like it cost more to run ES on a per person basis than other first party studios (Rare, Lionhead, Forza, Flight Sim) putting us at a disadvantage. (Plus they avoid the expense of a new office that we were planning.) And third, games those studios are expected to deliver in the next few years are expected to be more strategic and profitable to the company than anything we would be finishing after Halo Wars.
You may recall that the mission for our studio from the start in 1995 has been to create great games and a great place to work. Overall we think we have built a studio consistent with that mission. But within the framework of a larger organization other stuff matters and perhaps has higher priorities, including costs of operation and overall strategic direction of the larger business. The new leadership of the game group at Microsoft has a new plan for making the game group consistently profitable, especially over the next few crucial years, and we are the odd group out.
We have had a week now to get over the shock and have begun the process of finding new work, considering relocating, etc. We have heard from many recruiters and other studios with openings. There may be opportunities for ES people in other MGS studios, including the new one in Redmond. Microsoft HR has begun the process of getting us information on what to expect as we leave the company. In the meantime, we still have uncompleted work to finish.
Halo Wars All Hands: In August we shut down work on everything non-Halo Wars related and now the entire studio is focused on finishing this game by the end of this year. Everyone in the studio has a job until Halo Wars is finished. There have been no layoffs and none are expected. We have received fantastic feedback on the game at a variety of game shows and events, and want to deliver on the promises we have made as our last hurrah. We want a great Halo Wars game to be the final tribute to everything that ES has come to mean to us and perhaps you as well, over the past 13 years.
Newco: Studio head Tony Goodman has a plan to start a new independent studio following the end of ES and a number of the existing ES employees have been offered a position in this company. He felt he had to get a plan for that in place, even though it will not being operating until after ES closes down, so that all employees can know where they stand and begin making plans for their futures. I believe the spirit and mission of ES will be carried forward in this new company if enough of the key leaders agree to take part, which I expect to happen. There has been no announcement about what the new studio will be working on when it gets going.
Fate of the Blog: This was a sort of special edition blog focused entirely on the news about the coming closure of Ensemble Studios. I expect to continue with more typical blogs in the coming months through the completion of Halo Wars and my employment with the company. I do not expect to be part of the new company formed after ES is shut down, so the blog will probably end at that point. It was intended to keep our gaming friends informed about our games and give you a look inside the life and processes of a game development studio. I hope you have found it interesting over the years.
A Black Falcon Wrote:Yeah, as I said, I think AoEII was their best game... and even there, though it was great, it was nowhere near the leap up of, say, one Blizzard game to the next. It was a comparatively small improvement. Still, the first two AoE games were great RTSes, so I'm sad to see them go... even if AoE I annoyed me immensely by having triremes fight eachother by shooting giant catapult or ballista bolts at eachother. So ridiculously unhistorical... trireme fights were mostly fought with ramming, not archery. I know that would be harder to model, but it'd have been worth it I think... oh well.
(And why can't you do things like put troops on walls? It's such an obvious feature the games should have had!)
But anyway, good games. Hopefully this new studio can be as good.
Every studio does this kind of thing on and off... they all have. Activision, Ubisoft, Midway, EA, Microsoft, etc, etc... all of them.
The Byzantines had a big ass flame thrower on the bow of theirs Dromons.
Most of the siege weapons used during the middle ages were constructed and invented by the Byzantines, The trebuchet was first put into service under the reign of Emperor Basil the Bulgarslayer , Used during his wars against Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria.
AOE- Can not compete with the total war series or rival RTS games, AOE became burnt out of gas after Age of kings.
Age of Mythology and so fourth, Just seemed more like AOE with myth units and god powers.
I enjoyed the story of the AOE III campaigns,Morgan Black and the knights of saint John were interesting.