ensemble-studios posts

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!

The first Age of Empires was a good game. It may not have been the absolute best, but it was good. Much like all games that prove their popularity after release, the developers decided to give it a sequel. Age of Empires 2 is one stellar game, and it is easily the best in the entire series. It just adds more evidence to the supposition that the second game in a series is quite often the best. While it's a little harder to find today, it's still quite cheap, and offers an incredibly fun RTS experience unlike any other game you have played. Well, except for the first Age of Empires game, but that is a given!

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.

It's been known for several months that before its shutdown Ensemble Studios was working on a project that would have brought Microsoft's Halo game franchise to the MMO genre. Now a new IncGames article sheds some more light on that canceled project. Former Ensemble team member Dusty Monk claims he worked on the game, code-named Titan, from 2004 to 2007.

Monk, who is now the founder of the new development studio Windstorm Studios, said that the project was designed to compete directly with Blizzard's audience for World of Warcraft. So why was the project eventually shut down? Monk says Microsoft had some new people come in to be in charge of their game division and felt that they need to go in more of a casual game direction to compete against Nintendo's Wii console. He states, "So part of this changing of the guard at Microsoft came along with the changing of the attitude to this very expensive, very long and very protacted $90 million USD project we were working on . . ."

A few days ago we reported that former Ensemble Studios team member Paul Bettner states during a lecture at GDC 2010 that part of the reason for the development studio's shutdown by Microsoft was, "that every single game we shipped took twice as long as we said it would take, and took twice as much to make it." He also said that lots of crunch time and low morale were also big reasons.

Now another former Ensemble team member, Ian Fischer, has responded to Bettner's comments on his blog site. Fischer, who worked as a game design for the studio, paints an entire different picture of Ensemble's situation. He disputes Bettner's view that there was low morale at the studio, saying that their employe retention rates, "were in the vicinity of 90 [percent]" He also disputes Bettner's game budget claims, saying that while each game did cost more to make, their work was "no costlier or less efficient than any other developer of our caliber during this period of operation." He also states that all of the games made by Ensemble were profitable for Microsoft.

So what does Fischer believe Microsoft decided to shut down Ensemble in 2009? He believes that the studio's many non-RTS game prototypes which were never developed into full games might be to blame. He states, "Had we decided to crank out RTS after RTS instead of chasing after the MMOs and FPSs and RPGs and RTS-differents we constantly had in prototype, I'm sure we would have been a more efficient studio that could have operated with zero crunch. "

In 2008, Microsoft announced their plans to shut down Ensemble Studios after March 2009. Fans of Ensemble's games, particularly the Age of Empires RTS series, were in shock. After all, the game were big sales hits, selling millions of copies. Why would Microsoft want to close down the studio behind all of that success?

Our sister site Joystiq attended a GDC 2010 lecture where that question may have been answered. Paul Bettner, a former manager for Ensemble, said that things at the developer were not all wine and roses. Indeed, he said morale at the studio was low when the developer was making what turned out to be their last game, the Xbox 360 RTS title Halo Wars. He stated, "The reality is that every single game we shipped took twice as long as we said it would take, and took twice as much to make it." Because of constant crunch time, he says that the quality of the games suffered and so did the people.

One year ago this week, Dallas-based Ensemble Studios was forced to close its doors by its owner Microsoft despite becoming one of the most successful PC game developers in history with the multi-million selling Age of Empires series of RTS games. Many of the former Ensemble employees have moved on to other game development gigs and some have formed new studios like Robot Entertainment and Bonfire Studios. However, one of the original co-founders of Ensemble, Bruce Shelley, has been fairly silent about what he has been doing since the studio closed down.

However the newest trailer for Ubisoft's upcoming The Settlers 7 has revealed that Shelley has been hired as a game design consultant to the upcoming and latest game in the long running strategy-city building series from developer Blue Byte Software. The Settlers series has always been popular overseas but has never really been a huge success in the US. It's likely that Shelley's consulting work is an effort to broaden the game's design to it will appeal to a US audience. The game itself is in beta testing and is scheduled for a late March release.

Download HD Settlers 7 'Economy' Gameplay Video (366 MB)

Microsoft may have unceremoniously shut down Ensemble Studios earlier this year but the Age of Empires RTS series that Ensemble first created is still getting some attention from Microsoft. Today the company announced a new collection of Age of Empires III and its two expansion packs that will be released to stores on September 15.

The Complete Collection won't have any new content but if you haven't picked up the original game or its Warchiefs or Asian Dynasties expansion pack this would be a perfect way to catch up on one of the best PC RTS game series ever made Microsoft has said it has some kind of future plans for the Age series but so far there's been no word on what form that might take.

Microsoft's shut down earlier this year of Ensemble Studios caused a number of ex-Ensemble team members to form their own new companies. Perhaps the highest profile of them is Robot Entertainment which is now the caretaker of the Age of Empires online community. That means Robot Entertainment is releasing new patches for the Age of Empires series of RTS games.

Today, Trinigy announced that Robot Entertainment has licensed their Vision game graphics engine "to develop a multi-platform game". Other than it will be an original title no other info on the game was revealed. In their press release, Robot Entertainment's lead programmer Vijay Thakkar stated they choose the Vision engine because it "consistently stood out in terms of performance and how quickly our developers could see their ideas running in game." The big question is will Robot Entertainment be able to succeed as much as Ensemble did during its memorable run?

The PC game download-subscription service GameTap continues to add new games from Microsoft's extensive library of titles. This week the service adds Age of Mythology to its premium subscription service. The RTS game was first released in 2002 from the now shut down Ensemble Studios. It was a fantasy-themed departure from the developer's Age of Empires series and was also Ensemble's first 3D RTS game.

If you like free games (and who doesn't) GameTap has also temporarily added the original Fallout RPG from Interplay to its free games line-up. You can play the title for the cost of $0 for the next week. Oh, and you can check out some very funny GameTap TV ads from the Mega64 guys after the jump: