The Age of Empires is over - Ensemble Studios is shutting it doors... - by EZ-52
N'Al on 27/9/2008 at 12:30
Doesn't change the fact that the first thing Bungie announced after they'd become independent was an expansion to a game series they had been making damned to push out whilst still with MS.
Matthew on 28/9/2008 at 20:20
To be fair they had been working on it prior to their takeover too, so they've invested a lot of time and love into it.
smf2626 on 29/9/2008 at 00:39
To me this doesn't really seem like such a bad thing anyways. At first I was pissed about it, but I realized that the top guys at ES will be forming a new studio would just take things back to where they were before Microsoft bought them, which I thought was a bad idea anyway.
With the talent, and history of games the ES group has, it won't be hard for them to find a publisher. This also give them the perfect opportunity to move beyond the age series, which was getting a little stale anyway, and will also provide the greatest reason for doing a remake of the original; something a lot of the community wanted.
They'll just have to call it something other than AOE.
Hemebond on 29/9/2008 at 08:31
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
More like a change in direction from the
Windows games market.
Fixed it for you.
Quote Posted by Morgoth
Fuck MS. Never go to buy a product from them again.
(
http://www.ubuntu.com/) Welcome!
EvaUnit02 on 29/9/2008 at 08:47
Quote Posted by Hemebond
Fixed it for you.
Except the gaming market is microscopic for Mac (The major players being Blizzard and Asypr, pretty much.) and virtually non-existent on Linux.
DaBeast on 30/9/2008 at 01:12
Good riddance?
EvaUnit02 on 1/2/2009 at 06:51
Quote:
Now that Halo Wars is ready to ship, the folks at Ensemble Studios are officially closing down after a solid 14 year run. But while the Microsoft-run studio may be on its way out, many of the developers at Ensemble already have plans to form new development houses.
In his final blog post, Ensemble's Bruce Shelley revealed that the team isn't having trouble finding jobs. "There are at least two new studios being formed by ES employees and I expect both to do very well," Shelley wrote. "There were a lot of outstanding game developers here and it will be interesting to see how and what they do, both individually and as new groups, in the years ahead."
No details about either studio have been revealed yet, though Shelley did say that one of them will continue support for Ensemble Studios Online titles, including Halo Wars. Given the imminent release of that game, it seems likely that we will hear some sort of official announcement in the near future.
(
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/ensemble-splitting-into-at-least-2-new-studios.ars) source
Whether or not either of these independent studios survive, time will tell.
gunsmoke on 1/2/2009 at 15:31
At least some of the original developers will be responsible for ongoing updates and whatnot, for Halo Wars. Much better choice than having some 3-rd party try to do 11th hour patches.
fett on 1/2/2009 at 15:44
Off topic - how's ubuntu for gaming? I've been seriously considering converting but I can't get a good bead on how it works with old and new games.
Ostriig on 1/2/2009 at 15:49
I still like spinning up the original Age of Empires every once in a blue moon... Oh well, RIP. :(
