Microsoft: We still own Age of Empires

By Tom Bramwell Published 11 September, 2008

That should cheer up the Ensemble chaps.

Microsoft may have announced plans yesterday to shut down Ensemble Studios when Halo Wars ships, but Age of Empires fans are told not to worry!

"I want to reassure you that Microsoft will still own the Age of Empires intellectual property," Games for Windows boss Kevin Unangst wrote on Gamerscoreblog overnight. So that's alright then.

"As a company, we're very excited about the future potential for Age of Empires, and as a PC gamer I'm looking forward to what that future holds. Stay tuned," he concluded.

Microsoft yesterday said its decision to close down Ensemble Studios, which it bought in 2001 on the strength of the PC Age of Empires series, was "a fiscally-rooted decision that keeps [Microsoft Game Studios] on its growth path".

The Xbox corporation said it would try and re-home as many jobless Ensemble veterans as possible and that the Dallas dev's "leadership team" would form a new studio to provide ongoing support for Halo Wars and work on other MGS titles.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Xerx3s #1 3 years ago

    So it's more or less the same thing as with fasa and bungie then? They sell off the company, keep the assets and then form some sort of 2nd party relationship where they have access to in-house IP's.

  • paketep #2 3 years ago

    Yeah, not to worry, sure.

    And did it have to be that PC hater Unangst the one giving the news?.

    Fuck you, Microsoft!

  • Steroyd #3 3 years ago

    whoop de frikken doo

    This has me as excited as if Sony would dissolve insomiac but says, don't worry we own the IP's, just the dev that made them what they are no longer exists.

  • Les #4 3 years ago

    Steroyd +1

  • Les #5 3 years ago

    The shutting down of developers is obviously a method of bringing down cost in the short term for the financial disaster that is the MS home entertainment or whatever it's called nowadays, division. But whether it is a smart move in the long term (provided they want to stay in the console business) remains to be seen.

    It might be a further sign that MS isn't really commited to hardware as opposed to Sony and Nintendo. They need their own developers to make optimal use of the hardware and work as advertisements for the system while 360's proposition is much simpler: cheap PC on which you can play the exact same games you've always played (PS3 is too close to the 360 proposition for my liking to be honest. E.g. EyeToy should be much more leveraged).

  • miiiguel #6 3 years ago

    Les, MS must have done some real bad shit to you ;)
    You go crazy elequoent in this news (MS is loosing the OS buisness, they are not commited to entertainment; they are so falling, and your next computer will be a Mac).
    Edited by 1 at 11/09/08 @ 10:37

  • miiiguel #7 3 years ago

    ^ Les even (still) says that Linux will *eventually* conquer the world. And on odd days he says there'll be no more Xboxes, while on even ones he sayd Xbox 720 is going to be released tomorrow.

  • Xerx3s #8 3 years ago

    Ah yes, this wouldn't be complete without the comedy gold ramblings of les.

  • ratso #9 3 years ago

    age of empires was never any good so no harm done.

  • miiiguel #10 3 years ago

    I think Les might be the missing Kim Il Sung, and he's trying to preach the "juche" (not so) subliminally. The weird thing is that Ensenble never did any 360 game yet, but still, this might be a sign that *something bad* (good) will happen, and PS3 will reign supreme. We might even be able to raise the Berlin wall again, who knows?

  • autogunner #11 3 years ago

    halo wars going to be delayed and shite then if the team knows they are fired the minute they finsih the game...

  • Xerx3s #12 3 years ago

    "age of empires was never any good so no harm done. "

    Apart from the fact that it's one of the best RTS games ever made...

  • UncleLou #13 3 years ago

    age of empires was never any good so no harm done.

    ...

  • ratso #14 3 years ago

    I won't discuss it here but age of empires is a lowest common denominator rts. A kids version civ attached to a tactical sim where your empires army consists of around 10 units.

  • bluebird #15 3 years ago

    I wish someone would remake Master of Magic instead...

  • UncleLou #16 3 years ago

    I won't discuss it here but age of empires is a lowest common denominator rts. A kids version civ attached to a tactical sim where your empires army consists of around 10 units.


    Utter nonsense. You're comparing it to an entirely different genre. Age of Empires 2, especially with the addon, was one of the best, most-balanced RTS games on the market, with a fairly complex resource system and a variety of equally valid strategies, from rushing to turtling to whatnot.

    Apart form that, your "no loss" comment was frighteningly idiotic anyhow, unless you can't see the difference between something that is genuinely bad, and something you personally don't like. Which is rather stupid in itself.
    Edited by 2 at 11/09/08 @ 11:48

  • mingster #17 3 years ago

    Didn't Starwars Galactic Battlegrounds use the AOE engine.
    That was a really good RTS.
    No way you can say AOE was rubbish it was definately up there with the best of them.

  • Les #18 3 years ago

    lol @ X3rxes. Is that the best you could do? I'd expected better of you... ;)

  • Ranger101 #19 3 years ago

    This is standard Microsoft MO. They've been doing this since DOS 3.0. Nothing new here - buy a company for it's IP, close it down and produce trashier products based off the IP, but look nice.