You bet he has. Ubisoft has begun marketing Settlers 7 in the West, and to help boost awareness of the series in the US (it’s always been a more Germanic affair), the publisher has revealed that Bruce Shelley has helped as a “game design consultant”.

It’s only a “helping hand” kind of thing, so it’s not like he’s redesigned the series, but it’ll still be interesting to see how his hand has helped guide the game.

Ensemble co-founder working on The Settlers 7 [Big Download]

A former employee of Ensemble Studios has formed Windstorm Studios, already hard at work on “an online game unlike anything you’ve ever seen!”

Windstorm Studios’ president and founder Dusty Monk saw an opportunity when Microsoft closed down his former employer, Ensemble Studios. An opportunity to create something new in the massively multiplayer online game he loves. The studio is currently contracting industry talent to work on a project shrouded in mystery, but incredibly appealing, even in textual teaser form.

Are you tired of online games filled with depressing predictions of post apocalyptic destruction? Are you weary of walking through grey streets beneath grey skies and killing grey zombies? Have you had your fill of dank cellars and dark caves? Well so have we! And we’re ready to build a brighter world! A better online game – a game with the promise of of a hopeful future — cities of glass and steel, and most importantly, flying cars!

Wait, so not all futures have to be dark? What about the apocalypse? Aren’t we supposed to have one? I could have sworn one was scheduled. It seems like Dusty here is talking about the sort of shining future city that writers used to dream about back in the 1950’s. Towers of glass and steel, flying cars? I’m not exactly sure what Windstorm is selling, but I’m dangerously close to buying it, sight unseen.

You can find some more concept art floating about Windstorm’s website. We’ll be paying close attention as well.

Windstorm Studios – Tomorrow’s Games Today [Official Site via IGN]

Microsoft’s latest foray into the Halo universe has surpassed the million copy sold mark, making Halo Wars the best-selling console real-time strategy game of the current generation.

Nearly three weeks after the game’s initial launch in Asia, Halo Wars has sold more than one million copies worldwide, which Microsoft says makes it the best-selling real-time strategy title on the current crop of consoles. Of course, real-time strategy titles haven’t historically done too well on consoles in the first place, but still, a million is a pretty big number. Microsoft also offers up some more big numbers with the announcement. Did you know that 2.6 million multiplayer matches have been played since Halo Wars launched, or that 118 years worth of time have been spent playing the game on Xbox Live? Well now you do. You’re welcome.

Putting Halo in the name of your game certainly does move a lot of copies, though nowhere near as many as an actual Halo first-person shooter title. To put things in perspective, Halo 3 had 1.7 million preorders.

In the first of a new series of videos dealing with the expansion of the Halo universe, members of Bungie, Ensemble, and the gaming press talk Halo history.

The Halo universe isn’t just Master Chief. I know, I know; that’s a hard fact for some fans to swallow. Between the novels, the first-person shooter trilogy, and now Halo Wars, there’s a pretty rich universe to explore, and this video series aims to explore it, from the Spartans origins as a force to keep humanity in line to Master Chief’s last stand.

Twenty years before Halo: Combat Evolved the war between humanity and the Covenant was a much more strategic affair, as proven in Ensemble Studios’ swan song, Halo Wars.

Halo Wars takes the familiar setting of the first-person shooter series Halo and translates into a console-based real-time strategy game, in which players build up and army, gather resources, and participate in large-scale battles for the future of humanity.

Of course, having played through the Halo trilogy, we know how things turned out, just as we know the fate of most developers who attempt to translate the often complicated real-time strategy genre to the console. Was Ensemble Studios successful in their taste, or did they go out with a whimper instead of a bang?

GameSpot UK
-After shooting through scores of Covenant and Flood soldiers in three Halo first-person shooters, the United Nations Space Command’s story rewinds a few decades in Halo Wars. The game grants you command of both the human UNSC forces and their archenemy, the theocratic alliance of the Covenant. Halo Wars offers quality cinematic presentation and a simple control scheme that makes the game easy to pick up and play, but the limited amount of units, short campaign, and dearth of multiplayer modes make it ultimately feel stripped. Halo Wars is a fun playthrough for casual real-time strategy and Halo fans, but there’s not enough depth to win over hardcore strategy buffs.

Gameplayer
Now, for those of you who are fans of First Person Shooters, but don’t know a power generator from a plasma grenade – don’t panic. Halo Wars is quite rookie friendly, and it features very comprehensive tutorials that go so far as teaching you what a cursor is. Handy! After ten or fifteen minutes you can learn all there is to know about busting Covenant chops and setting up pimping command bases – this can be both a good thing, and a bad thing.

Wired
…deciding what to build and where is the bulk of the strategic experience. Upgrading your base will net you a maximum of seven building sites, but a single base simply won’t provide enough space to support a well-rounded army. It’s a simple system, designed to make fielding an army as painless as possible. But Halo Wars’ design suffers a bit from the fact that it is designed to be a more casual experience. If you understand rock-paper-scissors, you understand the combat: Vehicles beat infantry, infantry beat aircraft, and aircraft beat vehicles.

IGN
Like the Halo FPS games, the Halo Wars campaign is all about quick bursts of fun strung together, and that means missions with carefully defined objectives. For many PC RTS players, the draw to the genre is the ability to step into the shoes of a powerful general with every little bit of the situation at his or her command. But there aren’t that many ways to complete the missions in Halo Wars. There wasn’t a point where the game really took off the training wheels and said, “There’s the enemy – go get him however you see fit.”

TeamXbox
So the story is good, the controls are great, it does right by the Halo licence, what’s left? How about the A.I.? Is it challenging? Unfortunately, this is one arena in which Halo Wars stumbles a bit. It’s not that the game is too easy or too hard. The problem is, it’s both. It’s either too easy or too hard. It’s never in-between, where I feel like I’m truly evenly matched with the A.I. It never once surprised me or made me think, which is a bummer. I may always have multiplayer, but I would love an A.I. match that felt even.

Kotaku
It’s odd, being a long-time fan of both strategy games and Ensemble Studios, to love the single-player experience of a game they made, but feel so flat about the multiplayer sessions. Halo Wars is a fun ride, an action strategy game that delivers on everything but, perhaps, where it needs to deliver most to succeed: multiplayer gaming.

Too simple, or simply brilliant?

Bruce Shelley is an industry legend. Helped Sid Meier make Civilization, created Age of Empires, then joined Ensemble. Now, though, Ensemble are gone. And Shelley is trying to explain why that happened.

Taking the stage at this year’s DICE get-together in Vegas, Shelley’s address was devoted to pondering aloud how a studio that had only ever made highly-acclaimed games would be shut down. And while he doesn’t settle on a single, over-arching thing that can be blamed, he does a good job of being honest and highlighting the flaws – both internally and at former owners Microsoft – that, combined, led to the studio’s demise.

These include:

- Failure to diversify. Ensemble were responsible for many of the finest strategy titles ever developed. And… that’s all they were responsible for. Strategy games don’t make money like they used to.

- The studio grew too big. It had always employed around 40 people, and those 40 were a close-knit team. But as the years progressed, staff numbers swelled to around 75, meaning that much of that strong feeling was diluted.

- Two major projects the company were working on – one the Halo MMO – were canned by Microsoft. Yet after they were canned, Ensemble didn’t downsize, which would have increased overhead and may have contributed to Microsoft’s decision to let the studio go.

You know what it sounds like to us? This is like when you see a couple who have been married for 20-30 years get divorced, and there wasn’t any one thing you could blame. Nobody slept around, nobody hit anybody, they just… grew apart. Weren’t as right for each other as they once were.

There doesn’t always have to be a reason.

Live Blog: DICE 2009 – Bruce Shelley, Ensemble Studios Post-Mortem [G4]

When Robot Entertainment said “hello, world” last week, it seemed likely that, being made up of an Ensemble co-founder and a bunch of Ensemble staff, they’d be taking over Ensemble’s work.

Now it’s definite. A press release issued by the company today has confirmed that Robot will be continuing work on Halo Wars, supporting Age of Empires multiplayer and, most interestingly, are at work on a new IP. Which begs the question: if Robot are the new Ensemble, and Robot are working on new IP, who’s been given the keys to the Age of Empires franchise?

PLANO, Texas – February 17, 2009 – Robot Entertainment announced today the formation of its new game development studio in Plano, Texas. Founded by many of the original founders of Ensemble Studios, Robot has a staff of 45 comprised entirely of former Ensemble employees. Robot’s team developed the hit franchise Age of Empires™, selling over 20 million units worldwide, and the soon-to-be released Halo Wars for Xbox 360™. Tony Goodman, the founder of Ensemble, is the CEO of Robot.

“The video game industry is in a state of upheaval,” said Mr. Goodman, “not just games, but the entire landscape. Everything is changing: where we buy games, how we buy games, how much we pay, how long we play, who we play them with. As a fast-moving independent team of game developers, industry leaders and market experts, Robot Entertainment is ideally positioned to play a transformative role in the industry’s future.”

Robot Entertainment is working with Microsoft Game Studios to develop additional content for Halo Wars and support online gaming and community for both Age of Empires and Halo Wars. Additionally, Robot is developing its own original IP.

About Robot Entertainment
Based in Plano, Texas, Robot Entertainment is a world-class independent game development studio owned and operated by many of the founders of Ensemble Studios. With a team that has proven experience and expertise in creating games that appeal to massive audiences, Robot Entertainment is focused on titles that set new standards for their respective genres as well as groundbreaking original IPs. Robot can be found on the web at www.robotentertainment.com.

Ensemble Studios, developers of the Age of Empires series and Halo Wars, are dead. But the developers who comprised Ensemble? They’re still alive, and some of them have formed a new studio.

It’s called Robot Entertainment, and has been established by Ensemble co-founder Tony Goodman, along with “a number of veterans” from the former Microsoft-owned studio.

Is this the new studio – the one that will continue work on Halo Wars and other first-party titles – Microsoft spoke about when the Ensemble shuttering was first announced? Certainly looks like it, so we could possibly be looking at the future home of Age of Empires as well.

Ensemble Veterans Form Robot Entertainment [Gamasutra]

The third in a series of video documentaries covering the upcoming Xbox 360 game Halo Wars features members of the development team explaining how to make a console real-time strategy game that works.

Having obviously not paid enough attention during the early days of Halo 3 development, I was a bit surprised to learn that developer Ensemble first went to Microsoft with the idea for a console strategy game before the Halo licence even came into the picture. I imagine it must have been a very pleasant surprise, which quickly gave way to a feeling of oh my god, we have to please Halo fans.

Not that Halo fans aren’t easy to please. I mean, look at…you know what? Just going to leave it at that before I get myself shot. Enjoy the video!

At a preview event for UK journalists, the lead producer behind Ensemble Studio’s real-time strategy take on the Halo universe suggested that downloadable content for the game could be in the works.

UK tech news site Electricpig spoke with Halo Wars producer Jason Pace at the preview event for the game, who indicated that while there are no definite plans yet, the studio is committed to supporting the franchise. While that isn’t exactly a yes as far as DLC goes, he did mention that “additional downloadable content is something we’re looking in to.”

Looking into is much better than breaking down in tears or punching the journalist in the face, so we’re going to go ahead and put a check in the “Definitely Maybe” column.

Halo Wars DLC a maybe, says Microsoft [Electricpig]