Ensemble Talks MMO Plans is the latest article as part of Next Generation's Dallas developer tour, this time talking to Ensemble Studios CEO Tony Goodman. He talks about the start of the company and Microsoft not believing in a historical strategy game, the company's business strategy and the 2000 acquisition by Microsoft. The conversation then shifts to plans for a console strategy game ("When they got it to the point where we had Age of Empires up and running, and our people with gamepads could beat the people with mice, then we knew we really had totally reconstructed the control systems.") and the possibility of an MMO game by Ensemble

"Maybe it's not crazy to go spend thirty or forty million bucks to actually make one of these things." [Executive producer Patrick] Hudson points out, "At some point, they'll get tired of WoW and want to play something else."

"We haven't settled on anything," Hudson cautions. "It's safe to say we won't be chasing the fantasy genre. It seems like there are so many coming out. [We're] still pretty far out from even thinking of taking that prototype to a greenlight phase."

As for monthly subscription fees: "Yeah, I think that's the business model we mostly believe in," Hudson says. "There could be things that come along and change our mind, but there's a lot of people trying different things... If anything, WoW is charging too little, not too much."