Microsoft To Close Halo Wars Studio

Shacknews reports that Ensemble Studios, developer of the Age of Empires series, will be shut down by Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) as soon as the upcoming Halo Wars title is complete. Microsoft execs said parts the team would continue to work with MGS. Halo Wars is scheduled for early 2009, and Eurogamer took a look at the Halo-styled RTS game last month.

Comments

Re:Halo Wars?

[SplinterOfChaos]

Forgot to mention:
They could have at LEAST spent more than five minutes on the name. Even Halo RTS would be more creative!

You're doing it wrong...

[tambo]

Wow. Just wow.

What manager thought it would be a good idea to announce, before the product shipped, that -

1. the product will essentially have no support beyond v1.0;
2. any coding glitches or problems will probably never come back to haunt any of the developers; and
3. some of the developers will be fired as soon as the product ships?

Doesn't this pretty much guarantee that Halo Wars will be late (delayed by people who don't want to lose their jobs), full of glitches (since devs don't have to worry about the ramifications), and avoided by customers (who will know that the product is DOA?)

I thought this gaffe was only a software engineering myth. I'm gonna have to bookmark this post for future reference :) ...

- David Stein

Re:You're doing it wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software developer, I have a vested interest in the future of the software along with my employer's future, and take pride in the software I develop, knowing that I can expand and improve it.

Knowing that I will have to technically support the software that I am working on, I put all my effort into designing and implementing it with well-structured, documented code, easy to understand error logs and nice safety catches in case of critical errors.

These measures are taken so as to make my own life easier post-release to track down bugs and support issues, and to make it easier on other developers so they can understand my code and won't come back to hassle me with annoying questions.

If I had no future at the company then what incentive is there for me to take these measures? None. I would take the quickest route - including quick-fixes, potentially unreadable (to anyone but myself) code with little-to-no documentation to just get the job done as quickly as possible, get my pay and leave.

Bad title on /.

[atari2600]

Microsoft now says that it will shut down developer Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires) following the end of work on the company's upcoming RTS Halo Wars.

People use AoE as a generic term but there were several releases of which I loved AoE, AoE2: The Rise of Kings and Age of Mythology. AoM was one of the best selling RTSes for a good time (and so were the AoE* titles).

It's a shame that the staff is mostly being let go. Who's next? Bungie?

Re:MS Killing Off Xbox?

[KDR_11k]

The 360 is still ahead of the PS3 and since both MS and Sony have managed to convince themselves into believing that Nintendo is in a completely different market they'll think they won. Both MS and Sony will probably keep this futile battle up because they dream of being able to tie all kinds of extra services into their console to make more and more money. Meanwhile Nintendo is pulling out the market from under them but hey, that fad is going to end any day and people will go back to their same-thing-with-better-graphics consoles, right?