Ensemble Studios (developer of Age of Empire series) is shutting down

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

I hope and pray and pray and hope that this rumor is wrong.

EDIT: The original news post on shacknews.

If true, Microsoft continues their new tradition of mismanaging and hemorrhaging talented development groups. Ask me three years ago, I would have said they were one of the best publishers to build games under.

I thought Age of Empires 3 did pretty well, despite the game issues?

I wonder who would take over Halo Wars.

Eh, this leaves a bad aura around Halo Wars.

Which means you should stay away from Halo Wars unless it happens to have an awesome campaign. MP's worth nothing without a developer around to provide balance updates and whatnot.

Surprising and sad news should it turn out to be true. I've never been a huge fan of the Age series, but an abundance of players enjoyed them a lot.

Spunior wrote:

Which means you should stay away from Halo Wars unless it happens to have an awesome campaign. MP's worth nothing without a developer around to provide balance updates and whatnot.

In that case, you should just avoid it period since there's no guarantee that the SP will work out of the box, either.

Seriously, what is going on with Microsoft's internal development studies? Who's left other than Rare (who appears to be working way harder than they should - two games plus the Mii60 stuff this fall?). It really makes me glad that Bioware joined with EA instead of Microsoft.

In regards specifically to Halo Wars: I've been a big fan of the Halo games. They were really my introduction to the FPS genre, and I really like the universe. Nonetheless, I've been wary of Halo Wars from the start. Now that we've seen some of it in action, I'm even more so. Giving every unit a special ability that needs to be manually triggered seems like a recipe for micro-management hell, which is not my idea of a good time, and while they're clearly trying hard to make the game fit in the universe, it just doesn't feel like enough. Little things like the how the frag grenades behave (they don't seem to bounce...) and how robotic and lacking in situational awareness the units seem to act.

But I shall reserve final judgment and give the game another look once it's out, especially if there's a demo.

Edwin wrote:

I wonder who would take over Halo Wars.

Rumor is they'll shut their doors after Halo Wars, but all non-essential staff have been let go.

Edit - After giving this some thought, I'm starting to wonder if Microsoft isn't seeing the return on investment they were expecting with all of their internal studios (Bungie included). The cost for developing these games is getting very, very expensive and being tied to one console and possibly the PC is limiting the ROI. At the same time, because they're first party studios, Microsoft won't develop for Nintendo or Sony. So, they shutter the studio and move to a 2nd party arrangement, like what they have with Epic. Then the don't have the employee costs and they share development costs, so their return may be higher than the games they develop and market internally.

But then they lose exclusivity on titles.

SwampYankee wrote:

But then they lose exclusivity on titles.

Well, with things like Halo, they've got first pick. If they pass on it, then it'll go multi, but we know that will never happen. I really think they're more interested in going with a 2nd party system then developing in-house.

"Microsoft blah blah wrote:

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 Ensembles 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. Were particularly excited about the titles we have in the pipeline and continue to evaluate additional opportunities to bring incredible games to life with the industrys best. Our investment in games has never been greater than it is today.

Wow, what a crappy text that is.

So from my reading of that, it's functionally close to what happened with Bungie, where they become (quasi) independent. It's just the means of accomplishing it are different, in that the one studio gets dissolved and the new one gets formed.

Sounds like they just want to cut day to day expenses and focus on a more strict publisher/developer relationship. Let the new Ensemble studio worry about their own payroll, staff and expenses without a Microsoft company card tempting them into fiscal/operational wastefulness.

Just a guess.

Certis wrote:

Sounds like they just want to cut day to day expenses and focus on a more strict publisher/developer relationship. Let the new Ensemble studio worry about their own payroll, staff and expenses without a Microsoft company card tempting them into fiscal/operational wastefulness.

Just a guess.

I think it also has to do with MGS move away from the PC as a platform and towards consoles. I don't think MGS saw Ensemble as a bankable console game production studio.

Rat Boy wrote:
Spunior wrote:

Which means you should stay away from Halo Wars unless it happens to have an awesome campaign. MP's worth nothing without a developer around to provide balance updates and whatnot.

In that case, you should just avoid it period since there's no guarantee that the SP will work out of the box, either.

GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6197465...

As part of today's statement, Microsoft said that Ensemble's "leadership team" will form a new development house, and has already entered into an agreement with the publisher to continue supporting Halo Wars post-launch, "as well as work on other projects with Microsoft Game Studios."

4dSwissCheese wrote:

So from my reading of that, it's functionally close to what happened with Bungie, where they become (quasi) independent. It's just the means of accomplishing it are different, in that the one studio gets dissolved and the new one gets formed.

It never exactly made sense to me why the Bungie guys didn't just leave and make a new studio rather than spend millions on a name, though I guess it shouldn't be understated how important a name can be.

But this is a really strange move to make I think. When exclusives are getting more and more important I don't think this is the right move to make, though I don't know the specifics of the deal that was made with the closing of Ensemble. Still it sucks that such a long running and great studio has been shut down.

I really get the feeling Microsoft is thrashing around. Their strategies don't seem at all coherent from here.

Malor wrote:

I really get the feeling Microsoft is thrashing around. Their strategies don't seem at all coherent from here.

Seems to make sense to me.. They are divesting themselves from the "PC" only studios. Perhaps they simply dont want to be in the very risky PC development game for whatever reasons.

Certis wrote:

Sounds like they just want to cut day to day expenses and focus on a more strict publisher/developer relationship.

Bingo. Worked great for Mass Effect, Bioshock, Gears of War, Crackdown, etc. Microsoft has found the business model they like.

It's probably good for Silicon Knights that they aren't owned by Microsoft, or we'd be seeing their final notices too.

nsmike wrote:

It's official.

Spunior beat you to it, skimmer!