Brendan Sinclair Writes:
"LAS VEGAS--It's not uncommon for game conferences to play host to game postmortems; that is, frank discussions from developers about what worked and what didn't with their latest efforts. This week's D.I.C.E. Summit played host to a postmortem of a different kind, as Bruce Shelley, cofounder of Microsoft's shuttered Ensemble Studios, reflected on what led the Halo Wars studio to its demise"
New report from Skillsearch found that 22% of those surveyed had been laid off within the past 12 months.
It's a step forward for Stop Killing Games.
The Callisto Protocol director thinks the solution involves the right people, the right timing, and perhaps a little bit of AI
I don't agree with that. I WISH I could agree with that. But buying habits and customer opinions prove otherwise
We've seen developers in the AAA space try new things and ideas. More often than not, the customers aren't willing to give things a chance, or not enough people buy into the project for it to grow.
Creativity works better in the indie space because the budgets, pressures, and expectations aren't the same.
it's a nice idea and it worked during the PS2/PS3-era when AAA didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. smaller budgets and shorter development time left room for more creativity and more risk. a game didn't need to sell 4 million+ copies to break even. things are different now.
This is the guy who bragged about crunching his staff and having them work through the night. Crunch culture has lost more talent and done more damage to the industry than any other factor. Screw him.
very very good studio. i hope they figure out what to do next.
thanks
Journalists and Medias need to stop calling Ensemble Studios 'The Halo Wars Studio'! For Pete's sake, Ensemble did not get popular because of Halo Wars, they made many good RTS games before Halo Wars such as Age of Empires and Age of Mythology! Sure Halo may be a more popular franchise and Halo Wars is new, but give credit to where credit is due.
It's sad to see Ensemble Studio breaking up. I know half of the team will remain with Microsoft new developing team, wonder where the other half will go. I hope they will continue to create legendary RTS games as well.
And broke up the team. Their debut Console Game is really impressive, and they could've ended up making an RTS that rivaled Starcraft (especially with the rich Halo mythology). Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't like having a diverse and large number of first party studios.