Adinnieken said:
Scoobes said:
Microsoft:
- Closed many PC centric studios |
Actually, no they didn't.
Aces Studio was responsible for Microsoft Flight.
Access/Indie Built was responsible for Links, and sold to Take Two, which eventually closed it.
Carbonated Games were responsible for a few XBLA games, but mostly several MSN Messenger games.
Digital Anvil was absorbed into Microsoft Game Studios.
Ensamble was primarily responsible for the Age of Empires series, after their closure the founders reformed as Robot Entertainment, which went on to make Age of Empires Online, and Orcs Must Die.
FASA was largely responsible for the Mech series of games (MechWarrior/Mech Assult/Mech Commander).
In total, over a decade, Microsoft closed three three PC studios, absorbed one, and sold off another. It also closed up one casual games maker of console/PC games.
There were several "studios" that were setup for different game projects, but they existed within Microsoft Game Studios. Thus, a pseudo independent development studio was formed, but it was simply a team of MGS members working on a project for MGS. Hired Gun is an example, they worked on the Halo 2 port for the PC.
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I stand by my statement, 5 is 5 too many considerring the caliber of some of the studios we're talking about and the number of PC studios left. It's all relative although I should probably clarify it with a bit more though.
MS didn't so much as close down studios that were PC centric, but repurposed, restructured and closed them. When MS bought Lionhead for instance, a studio known for Black & White on PC; yet the Fable games have either released incredibly late on PC or not at all. We then have the 3 major PC studios that consistently produced some great games in great franchises on PC: Ensemble with "Age of Empires", FASA with "MechWarrior" and Aces Studio for "Flight Sim". They don't really have many PC-based studios left now and have very few PC games in the pipeline. So, relatively speaking, they did close down a lot of PC based studios.
