Ensemble Studios

Ensemble Studios was a company owned by Microsoft, which developed computer games. His greatest success was Age of Empires. It was closed after the release of Halo Wars.

Overview

Ensemble Studios was founded in 1995 in Dallas ( Texas) by Tony Goodman, his brother Rick Goodman, Bruce Shelley and Brian Sullivan. Two years later appeared the first game Age of Empires. In 2001, Microsoft acquired the company. To Ensemble Studios in 2006 employed about 100 workers, including Bruce Shelley, Graeme Devine and Sandy Petersen.

The employees of the company came from different backgrounds: Both high school graduates and doctors of philosophy were employed there.

On September 9, 2008, Microsoft confirmed previously arisen rumors about the resolution of ensemble and gave the closing of the studio known after the end of work on Halo Wars.

As a result of the termination Tony Goodman founded with 45 developers Robot Entertainment. David Rippy also started with Bonfire Studios, an independent game development studio. Then also arisen nor the Windstorm Studios and Newtoy, which is currently developing a game for the iPhone.

Games

The successful development of Ensemble Studios is the Age of Empires series. The magazine Gamestar wrote in 2000 about it: "With Age of Empires real-time strategy game was up." Even the followers of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings and Age of Mythology has enjoyed great success. Ensemble also published always extensions ( so-called " expansion packs " ) for the developed games.

On 18 October 2005 Ensemble Studios Age of Empires III gave out. It is the sequel to Age of Empires II ( Middle Ages), and has the conquest of America by the Europeans as a background.

The last game in which the studio worked is the real- time strategy game Halo Wars, which is based on the Unreal Engine 3.