Confirmed: Microsoft closes Ensemble

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Groucho said:

I have worked with both Sony and MS as publishers.  I've never worked directly with Nintendo.

I can say that Sony likes to give its 1st party teams the leeway to operate as they always have -- they bought them *because* they were good at what they did, and they don't fix what's not broken.

MS, on the other hand, prefers to muscle its 1st party (and 2nd party, actually) studios into being clones of MS' internal development style.  This can be pretty disruptive for game developers, who often are not used to thriving in a corporate atmosphere.  This might partly explain why they close, or let go, of 1st party studios fairly frequently.

This move doesn't surprise me in the slightest, even though Ensemble was, as I recall, originally formed by former MS employees.

I assume you're not refering to Bungie.  They operated much as they always had, internally, after the acquistion.