ensemble-studios posts

Last Sunday Microsoft held a 10 cent sale for the Complete Version of Age of Empires III at the Games For Windows Marketplace web site. The extra special sale of the historical RTS game caused many of the 10 cent orders to be fulfilled without a digital download CD key. Microsoft ran out of such keys due to the popularity of the sale and left many who bought Age of Empires III not able to play the game.

Now The Games For Windows Live Facebook page has confirmed that all of the CD keys for the game have been distributed to those folks who purchased it during the 10 cent sale. Microsoft stated, "Thanks so much for your patience, folks. We really appreciate it!"

Age of Empires III has been under a 10 cent sale since Microsoft put the super-low price on the RTS game earlier today on the Games For Windows Marketplace web site. Now Microsoft has announced via the Games For Windows Facebook page that because of the high demand they have temporarily run out of CD keys that are necessary to authenticate the game.

Microsoft states, "You can still buy the game during the sale, and we will auto-assign your key in the next week. There is no action needed on your part, this will be done automatically." The Age Of Empires III 10 cent sale (which includes the original game and the expansion packs The WarChiefs and the Asian Dynasties) ends in about 90 minutes at 1 am Eastern time.

Today is the final day of the daily deals promotion for Microsoft's newly relaunched Games For Windows Marketplace web site and they have ended it with a bang. For today only (until 1 am Eastern time) you can download and purchase the full version of Age of Empires III for just 10 cents.

Nope, that's not a typo. The last PC RTS game from the now shut down developer Ensemble Studios cost just a thin dime to purchase from Games For Windows Marketplace for the next 20 or so hours. Once more it looks like this is the Complete Edition with the game's two expansion packs (The WarChiefs and the Asian Dynasties) included along with the original game. Any way you slice it this is a massive value.

A development team that was formed by a number of ex-Ensemble Studios team members is now a part of the ever growing Zynga family of dev studios. Dallas-based Bonfire Studios has been acquired by social networking games publisher Zynga and will be renamed Zynga Dallas. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Bonfire Studios was launched due to Microsoft's shut down of Ensemble in 2009. Members of Bonfire previously worked on the Age of Empires RTS series. Zynga plans to publish all new games from its Dallas studio and it's likely they will be Facebook-linked titles. The Age of Empires franchise is currently in the hands of another Ensemble splinter group Robot Entertainment which is currently developing Age of Empires Online.

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.