| Dodece said: @patjuan32 Microsoft never stated they closed Ensemble due to financial concerns. Be wary of stating your assumptions as facts. They are not interchangeable. There are equally valid reasons for closing Ensemble above wanting to make more money. A equally valid answer, and one that does actually fit the available facts is Microsoft decided to restructure their internal divisions, or to create a larger division internally. In which case the manpower need to be reallocated from somewhere, and why not use the staff of Ensemble. Ensemble isn't an argument against Microsoft increasing its personnel. In so much as its highly unlikely Microsoft would want to purchase the physical assets, but if they could buy most of the team, and the licensed properties it could just become a team within the physical space of one of their two local development houses. They could basically acquire on the cheap. |
http://www.ensemblestudios.com/blogs/bshelley/archive/2008/09/22/ensemble-studios-closing.aspx
A senior executive of MGS addressed the studio in early September and gave us the news. He did not go into a lot of detail about why, but basically the decision, as I understand it, was based on several major factors. First, they want to divert the headcount tied up in ES and the costs that are expected to be required to run ES for the next few years into other projects. Second, it sounded like it cost more to run ES on a per person basis than other first party studios (Rare, Lionhead, Forza, Flight Sim) putting us at a disadvantage. (Plus they avoid the expense of a new office that we were planning.) And third, games those studios are expected to deliver in the next few years are expected to be more strategic and profitable to the company than anything we would be finishing after Halo Wars.
You may recall that the mission for our studio from the start in 1995 has been to create great games and a great place to work. Overall we think we have built a studio consistent with that mission. But within the framework of a larger organization other stuff matters and perhaps has higher priorities, including costs of operation and overall strategic direction of the larger business. The new leadership of the game group at Microsoft has a new plan for making the game group consistently profitable, especially over the next few crucial years, and we are the odd group out.
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The closing of Ensemble was partially financially motivated. The overhead costs of running a studio must be great as we can see by the financial statements of these western developers.
