Come hell or high water, Microsoft was bent on dragging Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, and Halo Wars into the future. Whatever the reason, the remasters and sequels came: Halo Wars 2, Age of Empires II: HD Edition and its new expansions, Age of Mythology: Extended Edition, Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, and on and on. Maybe they understood that Ensemble’s properties were too good to sit on. Maybe they realized that closing the studio was a mistake. Then something strange happened: Microsoft started to resurrect Ensemble’s old franchises. When Ensemble went down, it looked all but certain that we would never see sequels to Age of Empires III, Age of Mythology, or Halo Wars. With the exception of continued output by genre powerhouses Relic and Blizzard, the genre has largely gone dormant, replaced by MOBAs, hero shooters, and Real Time Tactics games – titles that value unit management and tactics over base building and strategy.
The RTS genre never recovered from Ensemble’s closure. " Age of Empires: Definitive Edition succeeds, but it also reminds us why the original was overshadowed by its masterpiece of a sequel." That Ensemble was shuttered before the game even hit shelves – allegedly for the studio’s propensity to go over budget, despite the fact that their games were always profitable – was inconceivable. Nearly everything they touched was a classic, from the original Age of Empires, to the sublime Age of Empires II, the epic Age of Mythology, and ultimately, Halo Wars, which did the impossible by making Halo work as an RTS, controlling well on a gamepad, and despite both of those things, offering depth and strategy as a multiplayer game. Ensemble was one Microsoft’s best internal studios and one of the finest RTS developers of all time. That Ensemble’s final game was a Halo title was fitting, but its closure was nothing short of shocking. Since its founding in 1995, Ensemble had developed six games and six expansion packs, putting out a game nearly every year and sometimes more than one a year.
It was a fitting way for Ensemble to go out: one of Microsoft’s most successful first-party studios, working on Microsoft’s most successful IP. It would garner a positive critical reception and sell over two million copies. Less than two months later, the studio’s final game, Halo Wars, would release. That’s when Ensemble Studios closed its doors for the last time.
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