$90 million canned Halo MMO

[heruamon]

Scoobes said:

heruamon said:

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?

That's not what I was saying, I was saying that Microsoft should have been the ones to direct there next project. Having a successful dev studio and not having them work/plan for a future project? especially with the number of IPs Microsoft owns. Seems a bit weird to me. And it's quite possible that they had a number of projects in the very early stages that may or may not have reached later development stage. At that early stage a lot of stuff can end up on the scrap heap.

Perhaps, but we will never know...what we DO know is that quite alot of the former esemble employees moved over the MGS, and we do know that the new studios started up by former ensemble employees are working/support the 360.  Finally, what we  do know, and what is clearly evident is that M$ needs greater first party support.