Microsoft: Age of Empires is Safe

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.