Microsoft is investing in their first party studios like never before.

[NotStan]

Lucas-Rio said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Lucas-Rio said:
Microsoft has by far the worst first and second party studio among the 3 manufacturer.

They don't care about developping games. They closed their best studio, Ensemble Studio without any reason. They turned Rare into a joke.

It will take a very long time until they are taken seriously as a developper.

Nonsense, Halo a lone puts them over Sony in my book.

They closed down Ensemble because they didn't need them. Ensemble's best days were behind them. If MS feels the need to put out more strategy games I'm sure Robot Entertainment would be glad to help.

Rare has played a pretty big roll in the 360 appealing to casual audiences. Something PS3 has been struggling to do. So I'd hardly say Rare is a joke.

It only takes one great game to be taken as a serious develeloper.

Rare is a joke. They went from an universally acclaimed  developper on Suoer Nintendo and Nintendo 64 to a very average developper to xobox, to a bad developper to Xbox 360.Now they are done. They are doing some Wii sport copies that any studio could do. They are dead.

Halo is a big franchise, but Bungie is not even with Microsoft anymore. And the diversity of Sony developpers annilates Microsoft.

Ensemble Studio was better than any studio Microsoft still has. The way they threated them was digusting. They forced them to make a dumbed down RTS for 8 years olds kids (Halo wars) then they closed them eventough it outsold pretty much all of the Rare shovelwares titles.

http://kotaku.com/5157029/so-why-did-ensemble-studios-close-up

I like strategy games as much as anyone, but it's one of the genres that has really decreased in following over the last years, it doesn't make sense to make strategy games when the audience just isn't there, and when you specialize in strategy games.. I hope you're not stupid enough not to guess the outcome of that scenario.

Halo Wars sold on the basis that it had the word HALO in it, just like anything that does sells better than most PS3 exclusives - if you want to play it that way.