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Comment on Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

To be fair, Age of Empires III was bad, and the last project Ensemble was working on before they got shuttered was a Halo MMO.

Also, Robot Entertainment (the studio that rose from the ashes of Ensemble) were the initial developers of Age of Empires Online, which was P2W slop that 90% of players couldn’t run because Games For Windows LIVE was a buggy crock of shit. And since then they’ve released nothing but Orcs Must Die games.

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CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
A Halo MMO could have been cool.

Speaking of MMOs or open world games, I wish that Stargate MMO game got off the ground. That would have so much potential.

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callouscomic@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.

Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, amd they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.

Ensemble got shafted. They were held up at the time as the leaders of RTS and Microsoft didn’t give a fuck. Just used and abused.

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- Clbull@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.
  
  AoE2 genuinely had a small competitive scene on Voobly and Gameranger. It was being played as a grassroots esport by dedicated fans even before the HD and DE remasters.
  
  One of the third game’s glaring problems was how poorly balanced it was. IIRC the winning strategy was to play French (who already had overpowered cavalry), rush to the third age and use a particular tech to effectively blockade your opponent’s home city and prevent them from playing anything in their deck.
  
  Even when AoE3’s Definitive Edition came out, fixed a lot of the balance issues and added a bunch of new civs via expansions, the damage was already done and sales were so low that Microsoft cancelled their latest expansion and halted development a few months ago.
  
  Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, and they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.
  
  Played the Xbox 360 demo of Halo Wars near its initial release and wasn’t impressed. All I really remember about the game beyond that was how bad the box art looked. I mean those spartans look like they have fucking long giraffe necks.
  
  Gamepad controls and real time strategy just don’t mix. You either make something so mechanically slow that keyboard & mouse would shit all over that control style, or have to bastardize the game mechanics so much that it’s all but fully automated. The only game I’ve seen remotely work as a gamepad RTS is Tooth and Tail.
  
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