Ensemble Studios breaks it down for Robot Entertainment.
While on its death bed, Ensemble Studios finished polishing up its Xbox 360 real-time strategy game, Halo Wars. This is the last game the developer would ever make. With that now done and dusted, the Ensemble team has already disbanded and moved on, for the most part. According to Shacknews, some members still remain at Microsoft in order to support Halo Wars.
Co-founder of Ensemble Studios, Tony Goodman, has brought a good chunk of the team along with him to spawn a brand new development studio. He calls it Robot Entertainment and it already has a place holder website. “The founders of Ensemble Studios, creators of the award-winning series Age of Empires and Halo Wars, proudly present a new endeavour,” it announces.
The new pad isn’t presently hiring, but its website implies it may open the hatches just as soon as it’s settled. This suggests it has a fairly clear idea on its initial project, and it actually takes a step further. “Stay tuned,” says Goodman, self-proclaimed robot overlord. “We have some big ideas…”
Some apparently take this to mean a massively multiplayer online game, but they might be looking a tad too deep into the wording. The truth of the matter is that no one outside the new company knows what sort of games it will create. Whatever the case may be, it would barely surprise us if we see a complete exodus from the real-time strategy genre, particularly having viewed the other very different titles its members were planning back at Ensemble Studios. We’re still gunning for that pirate-themed take on Diablo.
That’s about all we have on the new company, bar one slightly interesting titbit. The website’s domain, which is handled by proxy, was initially registered way back at the beginning of 2004, the year before Age of Empires III hit gold. Perhaps Goodman had a ‘Plan B’ all along.
On a side note, my doubts for Halo Wars are practically vanished. I recently tried the demo, and aside from longing for a number of control options as offered by the PC, overall, I believe Ensemble has packaged the genre quite naturally for the console. It’s still far from comparable with PC real-time strategy gaming, but it was a slightly startling revelation, as it really is quite intuitive.
Hopefully the new teams to form out of the Ensemble split retain that expert level of intuition.
Update: Robot Entertainment reveals it will be the studio that takes care of both the Halo Wars and Age of Empires franchises, along with its own original creations. Clearly, this isn’t exactly a break away from a real-time strategy mindset. You can read the official announcement by clicking the underlined word.
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