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Ensemble's Swan Song Complete

Kris Graft's picture

By Kris Graft

January 23, 2009

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Microsoft on Friday announced that Halo Wars has been completed, and is off to manufacturing. It's Ensemble Studios' final game.

The venerable creator of the Age of Empire series learned of its fate in September last year, when Microsoft announced it would be closing the internal development studio to shave costs, or as Microsoft put it, to "keep [Microsoft Game Studios] on its growth path."

Ensemble was founded in 1995; Microsoft acquired the studio in 2001.

Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game made for Xbox 360. Ensemble, which made its name as a purveyor of PC strategy games, hopes to have overcome the limitations of the console controller.

The game will be available February 26 in Asia, 27 in Europe and March 3 in the Americas. A demo will launch on Xbox Live on February 5.

puzzledmonkey's picture
On January 24th puzzledmonkey said:

Sorry to see them go - the Age of Empires games were awesome.

Barla Von's picture
On January 24th Barla Von said:

Not exactly a system seller, is it. Especially if you don't like Halo. This game will appeal only to those who already have the system.

Clinton_M's picture
On January 23rd Clinton_M said:

Best of luck to all Ensemble staff on making transitions within Microsoft or elsewhere. I started out lukewarm about Halo Wars but now have very high hopes for it. Other games like EndWar have already started to point the way towards a bright future for RTS on the console. Where EndWar sidestepped the usual game pad challenges by utilizing voice control, I really hope Halo Wars meets the controller challenges head on and triumphs.