"The team at Ensemble has made invaluable contributions to the games industry with their Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games and with the highly anticipated release of Halo Wars," the publisher said in a statement. "This decision does not reflect at all on Ensemble’s talent or the quality of Halo Wars--in fact, many people who have had a chance to test drive Halo Wars agree that it is on track to being a fantastic game."

Though Microsoft will close the studio, Ensemble brass plan to soldier on. As part of today's statement, the studio said that "the leadership team" will form a new development house, and has already entered into an agreement with Microsoft to continue supporting Halo Wars post-launch, "as well as work on other projects with Microsoft Game Studios."

Commenting on the reason for the closure, Microsoft said, "This was a fiscally rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth path. While the decision to dissolve Ensemble was not an easy one, Microsoft is working to place as many Ensemble employees who do not move to the newly formed studio into open positions within Microsoft as possible."

There goes my dreams of AOM2 :(

Story 1

damn that sucks. but its good to hear they will meet up and start a new project.

Age of Empires and Mythology were good back in the day, but what they are doing now just doesn't cut it compared to other RTS games or games in general. This is what happens when people fall back on the times.

Age of Mythology was probably my favorite RTS game when I was younger,  it's really sad to hear there wont be any more AOM or AOE games :(

You can confirm a story simply by linking to a site called "confirmed"? Crazy, good to know though.

 So what the fuck does Microsoft Games Studios have left now? They're hemorrhaging developers.

"

Age of Empires and Mythology were good back in the day, but what they are doing now just doesn't cut it compared to other RTS games or games in general. This is what happens when people fall back on the times.

"

Wow, surprising. 

So the Age of Empires developers are being shitcanned, wow...

"You can confirm a story simply by linking to a site called "confirmed"? Crazy, good to know though."

"Weltal said:

"You can confirm a story simply by linking to a site called "confirmed"? Crazy, good to know though."

It was a type-o, calm down."

That's sad. They were a pretty good devs. But did MS say a reason why did they closed the studio ?

Supposedly, it was a "fiscally rooted" decision...although given that AoE is one of the biggest selling RTS franchises of all time, as well as highly critically acclaimed, it's a very odd maneuver as far as "fiscally rooted" decisions go...

But didnt Age of Empires 3 bomb? I thought they lost a lot of money on that one.

I think there's some master plan here with first FASA & now Ensemble.  It's probably something that will bite them in the ass later on.

Someone at a board meeting once said "Look at how much money we'll save if we scrap these studios & absorb the staff!"

2 years from now they'll say "Oh shit...uh...well, we've got Lionhead & Rare..."

so no more halo wars?

wtf mate ^^ ?
no age of mythology two?

Wow that sucks.  They were pretty good devs and I liked Age of Empires.

:(, AOE was the game that got me into RTS and the PC. I am really gonna miss these guys.