age-of-empires posts

Age of Empires Online now has a new developer in Gas Powered Games. As revealed yesterday the team is taking over from Robot Entertainment to continue making the upcoming online and persistant RTS game from Microsoft. PC Gamer's web site has now posted an interview with Gas Powered's Chris Taylor on this suprising movie.

Taylor, who has been a huge fan of the original Age of Empires games, states that taking on this new project is a "tremendous responsibility, a scary responsibility in some regards because you've got a franchise that sold 25 million copies, so this is not something to take lightly." He also emphasised that Gas Powered is taking on this game for the long haul which is part of the reason why its previously announced RTS game Kings and Castles is now on hold. Taylor states, " ... we could come back to that game any time in the future, but right now it looks like we're going to be heavily invested in Age Online, and that's not a bad thing for anyone."

In a very suprising development, the official Age of Empires Online web site has announced that Gas Powered Games is now taking over as the developer of the upcoming free-to-play RTS game for publisher Microsoft Games Studios. Gas Powered Games takes over from Robot Entertainment who was announced as the developer for the game back in August 2010.

In a post on the game's official web site, Age of Empires Online's executive producer Danan Davis said that Gas Powered Games has been working on the title for some time to develop add-on packs for the game. He states that the switch over has been in the works for some time and Gas Powered and its leader Chris Taylor "share our long-term commitment to make this a success." The reasons for the switch from Robot Entertainment, which has a number of people who worked on the original Age of Empires RTS games, are pretty vague with Davis saying only, "Our previous development partner, Robot Entertainment, did amazing work on the game, and we wish them the best in their future projects."

You may remember that Taylor recently told us that Gas Powered's previously announced game, Kings and Castles, was now on hold and it's now clear that its takeover of Age of Empires Online's development was the reason. Davis states that even with this switch in developers the game is still scheduled to launch later in 2011.

Update: In a post on Robot Entertainment's message board, the developer's community manager assures fans that this switch was in the works for some time, saying, "This was always in the plan. We've even had some GPG guys down to the studio to get them trained up as far back as last fall. When we opened RE, our goal was to work on our own original games. We announced Orcs Must Die! this morning, and will have more info on future games relatively soon ;) "

There's one thing that has plagued Age of Empires since the series start, and that is the awfully muddy visuals. Even the move to 3D never helped, as both Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3 suffer from too much detail, not enough composition. This trailer for Age of Empires Online, however, brings back our hope for the series. With clean, simple colors, striking unit outlines, and a beautifully minimal interface, it looks like all the visual problems of the previous entries have melted into the void. We love the new cartoonish direction, and the Egyptian faction is definitely the best to showcase this new change with.

Download Age of Empires Online 'Egyptians Reveal' Trailer
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In 2010, Microsoft announced that the company was getting back into publishing PC games after several years of not releasing any PC game titles. One of the titles that Microsoft is planning to publish is Age of Empires Online, a persistent online RTS game that takes the fan favorite game series in a new direction and in several different ways.

The game comes from developer Robot Entertainment (made up largely of former members of Age of Empires' creator Ensemble Studios). It's been in closed beta for some time now but today Microsoft officially announced a couple of major features in the game. One is that the previously announced Greek civilization will be joined by the Egyptian civilization when Age of Empires Online launches later this year. The other announcement is the first details on the business model for the game. Check out the details of that particular part of the game and more about Age of Empires Online after the jump:

Microsoft is getting ready to launch yet another major revamp in its 3 1/2 year old Games For Windows program for PC gaming. Today the company officially announced that starting on November 15, the Games For Windows Marketplace web site will go live. PC gamers can purchase and download full PC game titles from the site. The Games For Windows Live client software, which also supports for full PC game downloads, will be used for other purposes after November 15.

Big Download chatted on the phone earlier this week with Microsoft group product manager Peter Orullian about the upcoming changes for its PC game download service. However before we get to his comments and the specifics of the changes that will be made to Games For Windows Marketplace let's go back in time to see how it has evolved to its current point.

After its surprise announcement earlier this summer, the folks at developer Robot Entertainment have started to send out invites to the closed beta test of Age of Empires Online. In fact the developer has been sending waves of invites to the closed beta for a few weeks now, according to the game's official Twitter page.

The site is still accepting sign ups for future beta invites but at the moment there's no word on when the next beta emails will be sent out. There's also no word on when the open beta for Age of Empires Online will launch. The game from publisher Microsoft will be released sometime in 2011.

Microsoft has been trying to convince the media that it's really serious this time about improving its PC games business. The company hasn't published a PC game in almost three years but now has three announced PC games in the works (Fable 3, Age of Empires Online and Microsoft Flight).

In a chat with MCV, Microsoft Games Studios' general manager Dave Luehmann states, "It is our job to lead the way on PC. And in some ways we are doing that and in other ways we are not. So we need to step up." He says that the three games mentioned above represent " .... some real investment and big IPs behind the Windows platform." And he adds, " ... we are not going to stop there."

When Microsoft made its announcement this week for Age of Empires Online, many assumed that the upcoming free-to-play online RTS game from developer Robot Entertainment would be one of those games that makes players pay for things like single units or other small microtransaction in-game items. Our sister site Joystiq, reporting from Gamescom, got word from the developer that won't be the case.

Robot Entertainment designer Jerome K. Jones stated that paying for extra content in the game will be like "paying for an expansion pack. ... You won't buy one thing at a time. You might buy an entire civ or another region with a bunch of quests in it." He also states that Age of Empires Online will have a whopping 25 hours of free content which in this day and age is more play time than a lot of games with $50 and $60 price tags. The game is currently in a closed beta and will officially launch sometime in 2011.

It's been over a year since Dallas-based Ensemble Studios, the creators of the best selling historical RTS game series Age of Empires, was shut down by its owner Microsoft. Today the company announced plans for the next version of the game franchise with Age of Empires Online, a new title that's being created by Robot Entertainment, the new Dallas-based developed that was co-founded by Tony Goodman who also co-founded Ensemble Studios.

In its official press release Microsoft is describing the gameplay of Age of Empires Online as "a living, growing online world, shared with friends and friendly rivals around the globe." Players will begin by controlling the ancient Greeks and guide the civilization to becoming an empire. Players will be able to play the game solo but Microsoft seems to be putting the emphasis on social gameplay with multiplayer missions with friends. Your capital city in the game will apparently change and grow even if you are not playing the title. From the brief press release it sounds like the game will have a "free-to-play" portion but its currently unclear how far that goes.

Microsoft announced no release date for Age of Empires Online in today's press release. However it did state there will be a beta test of the game at some point. We hope to get screenshots and more media from the game soon.

Update 1: We just got the first screenshots from Age of Empires Online, which shows a more "cartoony" art style than the Age of Empires games developed by Ensemble.

Update 2: The game's official web site is now live and letting folks sign up to be considered for the game's beta test. The site also stated Age of Empires Online will be a digital download-only game and is planned for full release in 2011.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

For a long time, real-time strategy games were relegated to a single time period. This was mostly because of the conflicting nature of different time periods. Having a game set in the medieval era is one thing, but if its across many eras, the art styles can clash and players can get left behind in a technological race, sealing their doom. One of the first games to try approaching this multi-era gameplay was Age of Empires, and it's one of the best RTS games ever made. Sitting somewhere between Civilization and Warcraft, it manages to depict the migration of civilization from the Stone Ages all the way to the Imperial Age. While other games in the series have been made, the first game still has an unimitatable charm that makes it great.