Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Age of Empires it over, it seems. This is a bit of a shock, but news has broke – and been confirmed – that once they’ve shipped the forthcoming 360 RTS Halo Wars Ensemble Studios will close its doors. Microsoft Game Studios have confirmed this with a statement…

Microsoft has decided to close Ensemble Studios following the completion of Halo Wars. After the closure, the Ensemble leadership team will form a new studio and has agreed to provide ongoing support for Halo Wars as well as work on other projects with Microsoft Game Studios

Hmm. Rest of the statement and some initial thoughts beneath the cut. UPDATE: Gamesindustry Biz claim to have a leaked e-mail from Microsoft Game Studio’s head Phil Spencer about the closure. Full text here.
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Ever-lovely Eurogamer have stuck up my review of the latest Age of Empires 3 add-on, the Asian Dynasties. It’s an expansion pack for an RTS not many people liked all that much, so I’m not expecting a flood of readers, but hey, maybe there’ll be 12,000 comments by the end of the day and I’ll be proven wrong. Most pertinently, this expansion is made by the cheerfully experimental Big Huge Games rather than the more stoic AOE stalwarts Ensemble, so it’s a fascinating beast from the off.

Random-o-quote:

I dunno about the mysteries of the East, but their equivalent of Homebase certainly has a better paint selection than ours.

(I’ve learned to be a bit more ‘just the facts, ma’am’ with strategy reviews than I used to, otherwise some readers get angry).

I didn’t really get on with Age of Empires III – pettily, I was turned off by its fonts – so wasn’t paying huge attention to the second add-on pack. Then three things happened which changed my mind.

Firstly, they released a demo of it. I’m always interested in free stuff. Secondly, Tom Chick got excited about it. When it comes to anything to do with the RTS, I’ll trust Chick a long way – especially because he wasn’t exactly enamored with the first. Thirdly – and this really shows how off my radar it was – it’s actually being primarily developed by Big Huge Games rather than Ensemble. Who, according to Tom, have been doing some really neat things. Including hotkeys, but Tom always gets excited by hotkeys. If a key’s not hot, he’s not into it.

612 Mb of Real time strategy ahoy!