Microsoft tells fans to 'stay tuned' on Age of Empires

Following the revelation that Ensemble Studios is to be shut down following the release of 360 exclusive Halo Wars next year, corporate vice president of interactive entertainment Shane Kim has reassured fans of the popular Age of Empires strategy series, also developed by Ensemble, that Microsoft is still "super excited for the potential for the franchise".

[JEDI WOLVERINE]

MS shut down Ensemble and keep the 'Age of Empires' rights and are going to do a new game in the future?

Wouldnt it have been more simple to keep open Ensemble and after they finished Halo Wars ask them to start a new Age of Empires game.

I gotta be missing something

*goes to reread the story for the 3rd time*

[beavis4play]

ms is soooooo excited about "age of empires" franchise that they're shutting down the dev. house that makes it?...........huh?!

[AAACE5]

What if half of Ensamble wanted to make more Age of empire games and the other half wanted to make different games?

Solution... Shut down the studio, so that the team that wants to mage Age games are part of MGS. And let the others open a studio and keep a good relationship with them so they make games for your console!

It could have been worse! When the original Rareware team split, neither (Rare and Free radical) of their games just seemed right.

[PoSTedUP]

i love AoE with a passion. its the only computer game i will play. omg its soo awesome. didnt play AoE3 though, i want to, i might buy it soon.

[Prismo_Fillusion]

I enjoyed playing AoE:Rise of Rome the most online, but AoE2 has my favorite level editor. Didn't like AoE3 as much as the first two classics.

[Julie]

Same, i like more AoEII, AoEIII was kind of weird for me, mabe because i played AoEII too much :=)

[kalos]

This sounds like the Tomb Raider/Eidos/Core Design thing all over again, which can be good but can also be very, very bad. The guys at Ensemble didn't deserve this though, they were actually doing a good job, unlike the last Tomb Raider game Core Design made before Eidos hit the roof and effectively destroyed them.

[Stryfeno2]

I guest the New Ensemble team will get a chance to make a new AoE...Seems fair.

[BlackIceJoe]

The way I take it I think Halo Wars is a way to test the waters to see if people like RTS games on the 360. If they do MS will bring out a new Age of Empires game for the 360 too. Because you will now have new fans of the RTS genre because of Halo Wars and at the same time they will get to play a new game called Age of Empires. So this way Age of Empires will get new fans and be able to have the old still enjoy the game.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

I was writing basically the same thing when you posted yours. I totally agree.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

I know Age of Empires has a strong core following. I just have to wonder how "successful" it has been on the sales front? Did it really do enough to justify the whole team at Ensemble?

Also, with the apparent success of Halo Wars on the 360. I wouldn't be shocked if the next Age of Empires game was a 360 exclusive. I really think they pulled these guys out of Ensemble to kill of their PC gaming division and are going to solely focus on making Exclusive games to the 360 moving forward. Windows LIVE is dead for the most part. MS see's the writing on the wall. Either support the 360 games exclusively and stop porting them to PC or face the facts that PC gamers will continue to stay away from the 360 knowing that whatever exclusives come to the 360 will 90% of the time wind up on the PC.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

I just read up on some of the success Ensemble had on the PC side...I can only summize MS wants to pull them over to Console alone. I am still a little confused by the decision after the numbers I saw.