this sucks, was looking forward to playing timesplitters 4 in 09. damn

http://www.ensemblestudios.com/blogs/bshelley/archive/2008/09/22/ensemble-studios-closing.aspx

A senior executive of MGS addressed the studio in early September and gave us the news. He did not go into a lot of detail about why, but basically the decision, as I understand it, was based on several major factors. First, they want to divert the headcount tied up in ES and the costs that are expected to be required to run ES for the next few years into other projects. Second, it sounded like it cost more to run ES on a per person basis than other first party studios (Rare, Lionhead, Forza, Flight Sim) putting us at a disadvantage. (Plus they avoid the expense of a new office that we were planning.) And third, games those studios are expected to deliver in the next few years are expected to be more strategic and profitable to the company than anything we would be finishing after Halo Wars.

You may recall that the mission for our studio from the start in 1995 has been to create great games and a great place to work. Overall we think we have built a studio consistent with that mission. But within the framework of a larger organization other stuff matters and perhaps has higher priorities, including costs of operation and overall strategic direction of the larger business. The new leadership of the game group at Microsoft has a new plan for making the game group consistently profitable, especially over the next few crucial years, and we are the odd group out.

/endquote

The closing of Ensemble was partially financially motivated.  The overhead costs of running a studio must be great as we can see by the financial statements of these western developers.

:(

:*(

It's a shame for any store or business to shut down......

I was just thinking, this news increases the chance that the rumors about Factor 5 being in trouble are true. Now I fear the worst...

Because Rare are releasing a few games each year now and helped create the whole avatar system for NXE. They're the ones with healthy jobs, creating better games than Haze right now. Rare have released 5 games this generation, Free Radical has released 1 terrible game. Here, have a cup of reality once again bigjon.

Everything Rare made this generation bombed except Viva Pinata and that's only because the game is extremely cheap (and good). Rare are probably losing money for MS but they don't really care.

Not really.  All of the games Rare released have or will outsell Haze.  Perfect Dark Zero and Viva Pinata both hit at least the 1.5 million mark and they've said they are happy with Kameo's sales (if you believe that).  Viva 2 and Banjo will do fine, and that's why Rare are still making games and Free Radical won't be in their current state.  You can also tell it's not something as simple as Microsoft not really caring when they just closed down Ensemble.  I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to get rid of Rare if they felt it necessary.  You may not like them but don't confuse that with "everything they've made has bombed". 

My singular point still remains if those guys hadn't left Rare, Rare would be producing even more games, possibly at a higher quality and those guys would still be working right now.  Hopefully creative freedom is worth it and they find another place to make good games.