Surprising news, this. Microsoft has confirmed today that it plans to close the famous Age of Empires developer Ensemble Studios following the completion of the upcoming Halo Wars.

Shacknews originally broke the story as a rumour, but Microsoft has officially released a statement confirming the move to close the studio.

Here it is:

"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.

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. This decision does not reflect at all on Ensembles 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.

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.

As to our overall strategy at MGS, it remains the same. We are committed to growing MGS with world-class talent both internally and with our external partners around the globe. We have recently added some well-known developers to our team and will continue growing the team. Were particularly excited about the titles we have in the pipeline and continue to evaluate additional opportunities to bring incredible games to life with the industry’s best. Our investment in games has never been greater than it is today."

Tags : closure : Ensemble Studios : Halo : Halo Wars : microsoft : Microsoft Games Studios : Xbox 360

Comments

By: Snake Plissken On: 12:15 Sep 10th, 2008 Offline	To say Microsoft is ambitious would be something of an understatement but whether hey can follow through or not is another matter. I won't deny the quality of the 360 but if Microsoft allows it's gaming division to fall into the same seeming apathy as it's Windows division, well good luck to them. The news itself is nothing but bad, how can closing and breaking up such a talented team be any form of good thing for the gaming community.

By: Evren On: 12:22 Sep 10th, 2008 Offline	Thats a damn shame. A brilliant studio, Though they'll all get jobs, and maybe we'll see some amazing games. I hope.

By: SwitchxA On: 02:29 Sep 10th, 2008 Offline	I am really sad they are going away. AoE III was really amazing. While I am not excited about Halo Wars, Ensembles PC RTS's were great. Microsoft better start changing things. With Rare leadership and employees leaving en masse and Ensemble dissolving it doesn't spell success to much on it's part.

By: Laylia On: 02:50 Sep 11th, 2008 Offline	This isn't overly relevant, but I wanted to share my over-riding memory of AoE II. On my old laptop, I was prone to leaving WMP playing a long playlist of all the audio files on my HDD, so sometimes inbetween songs you'd suddenly get "I need wood!" Ah. I want to play AoE II now.

By: Snake Plissken On: 10:12 Sep 11th, 2008 Offline	*Is already playing AoE AoK on his DS. I hope this wont have a negative impact on AoM for DS.