| Dodece said: What I find idiotic about these threads is the number of poster lambasting Microsoft for this, and yet when I look at their game collections I do not see a Xbox 360 in their list. Microsoft has to be more competitive to make their product succeed. Thus they have to make difficult financial decisions. Do you think it was easy for them to make this decision. They knew Ensemble could make them a lot of money on the PC. However they need to focus on their console. Ensemble was probably not going to help them there, and the genre is not a good genre for consoles. So they had to dissolve the studio. Yes it is tragic, but for Microsoft it might also have been necessary. The reality is this for all your griping you did fail to support Ensemble. You failed to support the gaming group of its parent company. When you fail to do that you make things like this happen all the more often. Were the 360 five million more units sold right now this would probably not have happened. Microsoft would not feel a pressing need to do this, and your favorite studio would have a future. Not to say you still have no recourse. Does anyone remember the New Coke debacle. Now if you are really serious buy Microsoft's hardware. Order their latest game, and write Microsoft a letter about you wanting them to change their position. I guarantee you if enough people write in, and Microsoft sees decent reservations for Ensembles latest game they would feel compelled to change their position. You do have the power to change this if you really do care. Which a great many members in this community do not. Many of them will say they do, but that did not get them into the retailer to buy the 360 to play the latest game from Ensemble. How were you going to support this developer if you were not going to do this in the first place. You should take this as a lesson this is what happens to studios when their fans do not support them. They get the axe. You can sit in the corner and bitch, or you can try to do something about what is happening. Read those comments as a call for help there is still a few months left to save this studio. You can do that by opening your wallet and speaking out. Microsoft listens to money. Put your money where your mouth is, and make it known. That is how you get a company to change its mind. |
I did put my money where my mouth is, by buying Ensemble's kick ass games. As did millions of others.
Ensemble was probably Microsoft's most profitable developer after Bungie (and their most profitable, after Bungie left). Does it matter that they weren't focusing entirely on the 360? They were still pulling in cash to alleviate the deficits from the rest of Microsoft's gaming division, and their profits could've gone towards the development of more titles for the 360.
And they WERE supporting the 360, through Halo Wars and the MMO. Microsoft just didn't give them enough time to actually release these games, and thus couldn't see their effects.
Don't give me this crap that buying all of Microsoft's products would've somehow save Ensemble, as if it's our fault.
