Impulsivity said: Oh god, Halo Wars was going to be made by the AOE guys? After playing Age of Empires 3 that makes me 90% sure Halo Wars would suck anyway, they can't make a decent RTS at all. They should give it over to THQ, now THEY know how to make an RTS (dawn of war, Company of Heroes, supreme commander...all the top RTS games from the last 4 years pretty much all THQ except sins of a solar empire).

THQ was only the publisher of those games. Relic were the ones who developer Dawn of War and Company Heroes, while Supreme Commander was from Gas Powered Games.

But it doesn't make sense that Ensemble Studios is shutting down, they always had successful releases, and Age of Empires 3 sold over 2 millions... unless it was some stupid decision from Microsoft.

i really hope this is false, AoE is my fav pc game series, and iam looking forward to AoE4

I know company of heroes is the highest rated RTS of the last 10 years or so with a gamestats press average of 9.5 (number 8 overall behind a few valve games, Knights of the Old Republic COD4 and GTA3) Dawn of War Dark crusade is number 25 with a 9.0 average and Supreme Commander has a 8.7 press average. In fact there are over 10 THQ RTS games and expansions in the top 75 (mainly from Relic studios but also Gas powered games), all 10 of which are well above any Age of Empires game.

Again I say Age of Empires is inferior to many RTS series both from THQ, from EA (Command and conquor, the Battle for Middle Earth Games), from Blizzard (warcraft 3) from Sierra (world in conflict), from activision/Sega (the Total War series) and from Stardock (Sins of a Solar Emipre). At best Ensemble studios is a 2nd tier RTS developer which has added very little to the genre and makes the 11th or 12th rated RTS series (and only because AOE 3 did a lot better then the earlier ones, I think the original Age of Empires got something like a 7 from IGN).

Maybe can't make a decent RTS was a little strong, they CAN make a half decent RTS but no more, they certainly can't make a good one, and given how many good ones are on the market (RTS games are only second to FPS games in how many there are on the PC) that isn't good enough. There are at least 25 RTS games in the top 75 at gamestats.com surprise, no Age of Empires game is among them.

Maybe its you who hasn't played enough RTS games if you think that somehow ensemble studios is some kind of superior RTS developer. There are so many the bar is pretty high and Ensemble just doesn't cross it.

THQ, still the best choice if you want a seriously good RTS made, especially if Relic Studios is making it.

?? For real? What's the reason for this? Lack of funding? How is that even possible when they are MS owned company? Their AoE games quite well too.

If true, this would be huge news.

JaggedSac said: Impulsivity said: Oh god, Halo Wars was going to be made by the AOE guys? After playing Age of Empires 3 that makes me 90% sure Halo Wars would suck anyway, they can't make a decent RTS at all. They should give it over to THQ, now THEY know how to make an RTS (dawn of war, Company of Heroes, supreme commander...all the top RTS games from the last 4 years pretty much all THQ except sins of a solar empire).   This proves you don't know a f****** thing about the RTS genre.

 

 

You were far too generous. I think you'll find he doesn't know much about any other genre either.

Seihyouken said: To think that this time last year Microsoft had 8 1st party studios. If Ensemble is closed then that brings them down to 5 including Xbox Live Productions. Bungie (Became Independent) Carbonated Games (Dissolved) Ensemble Studios (Rumored to be closing) FASA Interactive (Closed) Lionhead Studios Rare Turn 10 Studios Wingnut Interactive This combined with Bizzare Creations getting eaten up by Activision Blizzard as well as BioWare by Electronic Arts does not bode well for Microsoft's game division in the future.

I just checked Wiki'd some of those game companys I've never heard of, and Carbonated Games SUCKS ASS!

Plus, we have yet to see a Wingnut Interactive game.

That is all.

 

Oh, that must suck for Ensemble Studios, if that's true.
They've been really successful though, I don't see why they would be shutting down?

After they let bungie go I was wondering when this would happen, MS is moving the game division in the same direction as the rest of the company. Currently a large amount of the actual work done at the Microsoft campus is done under contract and it's worked very well for them, no worries about overtime, benefits and when people burn out they just don't renew your contract.

It makes a lot of sense, it will probably be cheaper in the long run to contract out exclusives with guarantees to sequel exclusivity then to continually fund internal studios with poor performance records like rare.

They've sold 20 MILLION copies of Age of Empires. They are probably the 2nd most successful aquisition they have made after Bungie so I doubt that they would close them down.

flagship said: After they let bungie go I was wondering when this would happen, MS is moving the game division in the same direction as the rest of the company. Currently a large amount of the actual work done at the Microsoft campus is done under contract and it's worked very well for them, no worries about overtime, benefits and when people burn out they just don't renew your contract. It makes a lot of sense, it will probably be cheaper in the long run to contract out exclusives with guarantees to sequel exclusivity then to continually fund internal studios with poor performance records like rare.

But Ensemble was always successful, and their last game sold over 2 millions and warranted 2 expansions for it.