Kinect : $500 million in marketing, Will be bigger than Jesus!

[Farmageddon]

Mr Puggsly said:

Farmageddon said:

I think it had to do with Microsoft wanting to focus on Xbox instead of games for windows, which clearly was in disagreement with Ensemble's speciality.

There was probably more to it than we know of course, but it sucks anyway, Robot entertainment has some of the former guys from Ensemble, but others also formed a couple other studios, and they lost their precious IP, so it's not like they're just not under Microsoft anymore.

Technically, they lost their "precious IP" when MS bought the studio. Ensemble is MS's property and so is AoE.

The reason MS has Robot Entertainment working on AoE is because those were the key people at Ensemble studios.

Yeah, I know they lost their IP back then my point is they can't really work with it anymore.

Not all of ensemble's "key people" are at Robot, even if many are. Still, as far as I know AoE Online is not exactly what we'd expect from them. Hopefully it's just a start, but as long as they want to use the AoE franchise they have to focus on Microsoft's needs, which are not what they used to make. Granted, that's kind of how it was prior to their closure. Still, it sucks :P