Yeah Ruffian is essentially being funded by MGS, only because its the first project they are working on. Same can be said about the team working on Halo Wars content. However they aren't officially owned by MGS

I thought most of the Ensemble guys went on to form Robot studios (independent)?

Actually people from Ensemble formed 3 different studios. All independent. Robot was picked to do Halo Wars/AOE support

You wouldn't happen to know the names of the other 2 studios?

Bonfire Studios...

Well to be fair many studios such as Mistwalker and the new crackdown 2 team are funded by MS in general...I'm pretty sure having those 2 studios as 1st party studios would be pretty costly.

The cost of overhead operations is what kills many studios, since they just don't realize how much it cost for the little things. I think M$ did the right thing is paring down in-house studios, but that needed to be followed up with getting 3rd party developers in place to work in a 2nd party capacity on projects. MGS needs to have an active slate, just like Marvel does for it's movies...if the game is 2-3 years out, start building the community of interest, and building the buzz NOW...rather than sleeping, as they have been doing.

New Mechwarrior game, but we need more!

Microsoft Game studios may have closed some studios , but they are hiring like crazy right now for Natal, Halo team, Live, and more. You can follow the people doing the recruiting on twitter

Thanks!