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ust because Ensemble Studios is dead that does not mean the studios’ Halo Wars are gone. The game will live on!
Ensemble Studios is being shuttered. The studio’s Bruce Shelley leaves us with one last (and bittersweet) blog post.
Halo Wars‘ attach rate should be comfortably boosted in Europe, thanks to a new bundle that Microsoft looks to be introducing in the continent. Swedish retailers are now listing a “Best of Halo” hardware release.
The clock’s ticking for poor Ensemble Studios. But they’re not done just yet, and one of the studio’s final acts of PR has been to release pics and info on the units of Halo Wars.
Developer Ensemble Studios has had a two part challenge: Make a solid RTS for consoles and make it in the Halo universe. No easy task by any means.
Bad idea or not, there were plenty of people at both Microsoft and Ensemble Studios who thought making a Halo MMO was a good idea. So many, in fact, that prior to the game’s cancellation, it had actually been given the green light to enter full-blown production, and it was only “some reorganisation at Microsoft” that killed the project off.
Ensemble Studios may be a sinking ship but that doesn’t mean that the talented developers behind the Dallas-based, real-time centric studio are soon to be lost to the great deep blue.
Microsoft’s been on a binder of late, shuttering the likes of Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios. From that, a new developer entity is being created. Just as its other studios seem at risk (namely Lionhead and Rare) for the same corporate reorganization, Microsoft is trying to quell those fears. Regarding both the Microsoft-owned Rare and Lionhead Studios, Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer states:
The work that those studios are doing [is]incredibly important to MGS. For Rare, this will be their fifth game in the first three years of the Xbox 360 – that’s crazy. Two launch games? What studio on the planet signs up for two launch games? That’s just crazy. So the productivity and effort in those two studios is just great to see.
About the Microsoft-owned Lionhead, Spencer says there are “no plans” for a Bungie or Ensemble-type reorganization with Microsoft Game Studios, adding “the next Lionhead game is definitely an MGS game”. What about the game after that?
Phil Spencer – Part Two [Games Industry]
Ensemble boss Bruce Shelley has broken the company’s silence on their recent closure by owners Microsoft, and while he’s largely diplomatic on the issue, he’s also honest enough to let us know that it was a shock, that it sucks, and offers a few extra reasons as to why the studio was shut down. Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.
Shelley also reveals that Ensemble was, per capita, the most expensive first-party studio Microsoft were running, and that the studio’s plans for a new office building perhaps played a small part in the decision to shutter them as well. Most interesting/sad, however, is the revelation by the long-time PC gaming God that while the majority of the Ensemble brains trust will be forming a new studio once work is done on Halo Wars, Shelley says “I do not expect to be part of the new company formed after ES is shut down”.
Ensemble Studios Closing [Ensemble, thanks Dave!]
