Saw that spelling and grammar comment coming a mile away. Anyway i was typing kind of quick so no time to read over my post and check fro grammar errors. What ever helps you sleep at night is fine by me. 

Names?  It is an popular subject on the Bungie forums and I never saw more than 5 names..

Technically Certain Affinity did the Reach map pack and the Halo Anniversary multiplayer maps and Saber Interactive did the engine that allows the switching for Anniversary.

Frank O' Connor

Vic Deleon

Donnie Taylor

Will Christiansen

Dan Callan

Chad Armstrong

well okay give you this ones wouldn't call those new ones in your listed as ex bungie employees though =p.  one was a tester and the other two worked very short at bungie with an interim contract but okay you get them and I would still not call it a lot...

@Scoobes what I meant was that strategy is a dying genre and having a studio that had around 200 employees specializing in that particular genre doesn't make sense, as the MGS have now become more console centric it would make sense to assume that if they were to make any strategy games, they would be on the console too, and the strategy games that are already here are not faring very well - Red Alert 3(Which was a decent game, not as good as 1&2 but good nonetheless) - sold poorly by the current standards. Civ Revolutions - which again was decent if a bit dumbed down version of the PC games, Supreme Commander - which I personally didn't like. Tiberium Wars - Haven't played that one yet, but the sales are not much better either. Not one of the games above has managed to break a million on 360. And probably several other games that I am missing out on such as the LOTR one.

to be fair arround half of those 200 were hired to work on the Halo MMO not stratergy games. And even the below par AOE3 sold over 2 million copies on PC so it's not like Ensomble games didn't sell and they could have been downsized after Halo was canceled and gone back to making profitable RTS games but no MS didn't want profitable PC games they wanted games to push 360 so in the same year they once again told PC gamers that MS still cared and would not be forgetting them they axed their oldest and most successful PC developer who they had just forced to make a console only RTS a genre that never sold well on consoles, as a fuck you to core PC gamers.

It's obvious where the comparisons are coming from. The OP mentioned MS having the weakest first party, drawing a parallel with the other two big players first party studios. He then mentioned that he thinks MS will be offering the "full package" now that they have expanded their first party, which opened the door for comparisons to be made.

This is an interesting business move by MS. I was wondering how they were going to enter the next generation with such a tiny first party. I figured they might try to cut more deals, enter into more early contracts, on DLC and 6-month contracts for games. That however, probably works better if you are in a commanding position and I thought it would be risky by MS to assume they will be in that position again, and wont be under more pressure from Nintendo or Sony, or both, this time around.

I would not be surprised if MS really jump after the casual crowd next gen, while keeping only a minimum of proven core IP's running to get the hardcore to jump on board. So if most of these studios were developing next gen casual Kinect games, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

As a side note: Remedy doesn't seem like a great purchase from any big publishers perspective I'd imagine. The fans love the games that's for sure, but it took them 5 years to release Max Payne, then another 5 years for Alan Wake, which sold only a fraction of what Max Payne sold. They dither, make changes to engines and game-play and it all takes too damn long.

"So if most of these studios were developing next gen casual Kinect games, it wouldn't surprise me at all."
surprise,http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=137032&page=1
keep going,i'm waiting some people's next action