Microsoft: Age of Empires is Safe

wtf do u expect. with the NWO slowly forming; buying out companies, shafting us people, wasting billions of tax payers money on war. All they want is revenue, now that they own so much, reputation doesn't matter, because if u are sick of MS and go to Sony, no one will know that they are owned by the same person; the money going to the same person.

THINGS DONT HAPPEN FOR NO REASON!

Research NWO (New World Order) and educate yourself the TRUTH, not what the media is falsely portraying to u. DO THIS FOR MANKIND! PLEASE!

I think MS is "attempting" to play us PC gamers like a fiddle. I'd feel confident in guessing PC gamers only stay with the MS OS's because of gaming. If PC gaming did die I can't but imagine a huge majority of gamers would jump to a free OS's and tell all their friends/family to follow suite. I know a butt load of people I would be switching over. I seriously believe PC gaming is lifeblood for the Microsoft OS and they are taking a major gamble by continuing to ignore us. I've already bought the other two competing consoles because of MS antics. I refuse to play their game of paying for online and micro transactions because this is their eventual goal. Milking gamers for every dime possible.

I'll stick to my free PC add ons, mods, online match making and fire up my PS3/Wii when in the mood for a casual game.

How to kill a franchise. Steps:

1. Buy the developer and demand you own their most popular franchise
2. Force the developer to make the exact same franchise games with little innovation between iterations
3. Break the team up by relocating them or just keep stifling them until they get bored
4. Offload the franchise to a different developer entirely

Steps 1-3 complete, just waiting on #4.

Microsoft is trying to kill triple A development on PC, so that all dev migrates to their money maker platform, the 360. They make a 10 buck royalty on every 360 copy sold before anyone else gets paid, up front. They get nothing for each PC game sold, do the math. For each dual PC/360 release their thinking is that PC sales take 360 royalties out of their pocket. The Age of Empires series was the most successful RTS series of all time, not a single Age release sold under 3 million units!!! They made half a billion dollars from this franchise alone, why would you kill the most successful RTS of all time if your overall strategy was not to shut down PC development in the long term?

I've noticed that when people finally decide to move on from PC gaming, they almost always get Xbox, when PS3 should be the logical choice since it's the most open platform out of the three consoles and has free online. I guess people are comfortable staying MS land, and PS3 has this "Sony stigma" (OMG SONY ROOTKITS KILLED MY MEGAHURTZ). But people don't realize that MS has done more to kill PC gaming than anybody else.

Just what the hell good is it to own the name of the game if you've let go of all the people that made it a name worth remembering in the first place? Does Microsoft really think they can just hand the assets over to some other group of developers and make a game that rivals the spirit, the creativity, and the brilliance of Age of Empires?

can you buy AOE games online ala Steam?

So nice of Microsoft to rub salt in the wound.

Fuckers.

This is like saying:

"Hey guys! Firefly is coming back! But Josh is not doing it."

Heh.

Where is your Steam competitor?

Why not focus a bit more on PC gaming, and make consoles secondary?




Oh wait, you make more money on the 2nd, even though real gamers prefer the first!

Let me redo that last sentence.

Real, mature gamers prefer the PC.

Does he really thinks he can fool anyone? Please, we've heard the "Och..PCgaming is so important to us, we'll be focusing on it now" BS for years now and instead of anything good we only see MS slowly killing it's PCgaming division. The only PCgaming project MS cared about was GFWLive, so they could rip us off, but that failed.
Really, I understand you need to concentrate on 360, that's fine, just please don't rant how PCgaming is important to you, because it feels like you assume PCgamer are morons if you really think they will believe your nonsense

Yeah, you're clearly "super excited" about Age of Empires. So excited you couldn't help but fire most of the people who made it. I hope United Business Media doesn't ever get "super excited for the potential for the Gamasutra franchise."

I don't know what the hell is going on over at Microsoft Game Studios. Ensemble's last full game sold over two million units, and somehow there was no way to make the studio financially feasible? Are you serious? Meanwhile, Rare, one of the biggest wastes of acquisition money this industry has ever seen, at $375 million (!!), surely hasn't come even remotely, vaguely close to fulfilling its financial expectations on a dollar per dollar basis, either compared to Ensemble or otherwise, and yet it seems to have a golden ticket.

This is after FASA, which delivered the commercially- and critically-successful Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, was given the mandate to make Shadowrun some kind of ridiculous showcase for Vista and cross-platform multiplayer, neither of which was necessary and which surely only harmed its prospects, even beyond the controversy over its genre.

A few years ago, Microsoft's internal development was pretty strong and getting stronger, covering a wide variety of genres and delivering well-received titles. Now it's dwindling down to almost nothing, to the point where their big main studios are Rare and Lionhead. I'm looking forward to Fable 2, but man that's bizarre.

What goes around comes around.

hay guys don't worry our monies is safe. We didn't lose the license to those losers we had to cut. Don't worry! We'll find some cheap studio and continue to pump out Age of Empire games! REST ASSURED!!!!!11

Give the franchise to Rare so we can have "Age of Pinata"

being "excited about the franchise's potential" and releasing another game are two entirely different things. its important to understand corporate-speak. this means they probably want to make another game, but dont want to commit to it because shit might not work out.

"ongoing relationship". Seems almost like a euphemism for "choke collar".