$90 million canned Halo MMO

[heruamon]

Scoobes said:

hobbit said:

outlawauron said:

The problems with Ensemble stem from poor management. Overspending and not reaching deadlines so problems with those in charge. Just shutting down the studio isn't always the best solution.

In this case it was. Ensemble had no games in the pipeline, putting in new management and laying off 10% of the work force wouldn't change that. You have to remember that the success of halo wars was uncertain and apparently nobody in charge had planed another AgeofEmpires. They could have kept them open another 6 months to see if a halo wars 2 viable but that would have been a waste of millions of dollars.

Firstly, how do you know this? A lot of development studios don't announce what they're furture projects are until they're well into production. Secondly, surely this is the fault of Microsoft? Why would they ask and fund the development of Halo Wars if they were uncertain of its success? Having a successful development studio that has released 4 profitable games selling a total of 20 million units and not giving them a future project to work on?

As far as I can tell Microsoft higher ups saw a core (but successful) PC game studio and didn't see a place for them on the more casual console market.

If they were working on stuff...where is it?  M$ would still own the IP...and we've seen zippo from the defuncted Esemble....so why do you think they had alot of stuff in the pipeline?