starcraft said:
twesterm said:
I completely lost all interest for this game with the Ensemble studio closing. If the game was even decent they would have kept the studio open until the game was at the very least finished.
The fact they closed the game down tells me two things:
- The game was so bad that Microsoft didn't want to waste any more money on it but knew that since it was so close to completion they might as well finish it since it does have the Halo name and it will sell.
- Ensemble employees that weren't outright fired were given incentives to stay at the studio and finish the game. I know people there and the incentives weren't good and they weren't even likely to get those even if they did stay. Most people went ahead and just started looking for new jobs elsewhere. This means the game got stopped in probably an alpha state with a few people desperately trying to clean up all the bugs.
So yeah, this game instantly went from probably to buy to couldn't care less.
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I doubt it. You say you know people there, but you didn't mention any inside information on the game's quality.
Every preview says it looks pretty sick, Ensemble have an awesome track record and the game was in production a fair while.
That aside, given their Xbox 360 focus, there was tangible business reasons for Microsoft to amalgamate Ensemble developers into other 360-focused dev teams and the new team. That said, I almost cry when I think of Age of Empires.
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You make their end sound a lot rosier than it was. A blog post on Ensemble Studios' website made it quite apparent that none of the staff were expecting this fate (even going so far as to think they were untouchable, because of their success with AoE), and were quite bothered (read: royally pissed off) by the move.
Also, Twesterm is probably more "in the know" in the industry than anybody else on this site. I'd trust what he says.
