Another Studio Formed by Ex-Ensemble Staff

Age of Empires house Ensemble Studios may have been canned by parent Microsoft, but its talent is quickly finding new outlets.

On Thursday, former Ensemble staffers announced Dallas, Tex.-based Bonfire Studios, a 35-percent development house that's working on an original IP to be announced "in the coming months."

Bonfire's staff is composed entirely of former Ensemble employees, who had just completed Halo Wars.

The announcement of Bonfire comes shortly after the establishment of Plano, Tex.-based Robot Entertainment, the 45-person studio made up entirely of former Ensemble workers.

“Ensemble had an incredible group of highly talented people and the companies coming out of it are really made up of the best of the best. Ensemble was one of the few studios with two A-teams,” said David Rippy (pictured), who's serving as CEO of Bonfire.

Source: http://www.edge-online.com/news/another-studio-formed-ex-ensemble-staff

Source 2: http://kotaku.com/5156897/bonfire-rises-from-the-ashes-of-ensemble

Bonfire Rises From The Ashes Of Ensemble

Robot Entertainment isn't the only development house rising from the ruins of Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios, as 35 ex-Ensemble employees join together as Bonfire Studios, already hard at work on an original title.

Days after Ensemble co-founder Tony Goodman announced the formation of Robot Entertainment, former management team members of Ensemble announce Bonfire Studios, a new development house based in Dallas. Like Robot, Bonfire is currently working on developing a new intellectual property. They just don't have to worry about maintaining support for Halo Wars and the Age of Empires community at the same time. Freedom!

"Ensemble had an incredible group of highly talented people and the companies coming out of it are really made up of the best of the best. Ensemble was one of the few studios with two A-teams," said David Rippy, president and CEO of Bonfire Studios. "We are already working on an original IP that we'll start talking about in the next few months."

It should be interesting to see what sort of original properties are produced at both Robot Entertainment and Bonfire. I wonder which one is good and which one is evil?

Robots are evil, duh.

Fire, on the other hand, purges evil... even bonfires do.

Intresting to see what their new IP is and if this is another Microsoft 2nd party.

Desolving Ensemble to form two 2nd parties might have been a good idea.

And evidence, fire also destroys that :D

Anyway, good to see that all the devs seem to be getting other jobs

so which of them is gonna make age4, btw why didnt they only make a single studio they even both located in texas.

Didn't they say that Robot was going to be in charge of upkeeping Halo Wars and Age of Empire? This one probably has a different focus.

Microsofts new strategy is probably paying 2nd and 3rd party studios to make games and consolidating the ones they have left into one.

these guys r probably going to make the best new rts(i said new meaning aoe will also be awesome)