Whats the deal with MS closing Ensemble?

I have loved Ensemble for years, why on earth is M$ closing them down? just for the leaders to go and make a new Dev company and do the exact same thing?losing that name recognition and all that is a bad idea IMHO Whats the deal with MS closing Ensemble?
Yea it doesn't make sense to me either. I loved the age of empires games...Whats the deal with MS closing Ensemble?
i thoguht 3 was a little letdown, nowhere near as epic as AoE2, but still, Ensemble has been around for a good while, made some very good RTS games, and now M$ is closing them after they finish Halo Wars, its not like they are going to leave M$ or anythign eather, so....wtf?
they're PC-centric RTS dev and RTSes don't sell well on 360. MS couldn't switch them to 360 and have a great result, so they've closed them down.
[QUOTE=''shadow_hosi'']i thoguht 3 was a little letdown, nowhere near as epic as AoE2, but still, Ensemble has been around for a good while, made some very good RTS games, and now M$ is closing them after they finish Halo Wars, its not like they are going to leave M$ or anythign eather, so....wtf?[/QUOTE] *Everybody* loves Age of Empires 2 :D That game can't be beat. Perhaps Microsoft wasn't happy with the way Halo wars was developed...
but they arent really closing them down, they are making a new dev team and will still do work under M$....
[QUOTE=''shadow_hosi'']but they arent really closing them down, they are making a new dev team and will still do work under M$....[/QUOTE]no, they did really close them down. It's just that some Ensemble guys prefered to get away from MS than to get absorbed into them and they made new independent studio (not owned by MS) that will do HW support
so they can spent more money on timed exclusive games or exclusive games.
[QUOTE=''AdrianWerner'']they're PC-centric RTS dev and RTSes don't sell well on 360. MS couldn't switch them to 360 and have a great result, so they've closed them down.[/QUOTE] Didn't Ensemble split anyway?Which resulted in Big Huge Games?
thats where big huge came from?i like them :)RoN rocked
[QUOTE=''skrat_01''][QUOTE=''AdrianWerner'']they're PC-centric RTS dev and RTSes don't sell well on 360. MS couldn't switch them to 360 and have a great result, so they've closed them down.[/QUOTE] Didn't Ensemble split anyway?Which resulted in Big Huge Games? [/QUOTE]No, Big Huge Games leads were from Firaxis :)
You propably mistook BigHugeGames with Stainless Steel, the company that made Empire Earth, which was founded by Rick Goodman (lead designer of first AoE)
aoe2 best strategy game ever made,
[QUOTE=''AdrianWerner''][QUOTE=''skrat_01''][QUOTE=''AdrianWerner'']they're PC-centric RTS dev and RTSes don't sell well on 360. MS couldn't switch them to 360 and have a great result, so they've closed them down.[/QUOTE] Didn't Ensemble split anyway?Which resulted in Big Huge Games? [/QUOTE]No, Big Huge Games leads were from Firaxis :)
You propably mistook BigHugeGames with Stainless Steel, the company that made Empire Earth, which was founded by Rick Goodman (lead designer of first AoE) [/QUOTE]Ahhh I see, thanks.
Don't care, AOE3 blew so bad they'd had their time. Loved AOE1/2 but 3 was god awful.
Why's everyone all sad now that Ensemble has been dissolved? Before all this happened, the only good thing people said about Ensemble was ''Oh, they did well with AoE 2, but they've done nothing substantial since''. Age of Mythology was apparently ho-hum, Age of Empires III was just plain ''bleh'', and that they were a bunch of has-beens.Now that they've actually been shut down, everyone's like ''Omg I cry blood''. Seriously, what the hell.I think I know why the sentiments towards Ensemble were spun that way here in System Wars, though I won't spoon feed it to everyone here, because they too know what's up.In any case, we can all just play AoE 2 once more in memory of them.