Ensemble Studios' exiles form Robot Entertainment

[TehMac]

No word on what types of projects Robot will be working on, but many former Ensemble employees have joined Goodman at the new studio. It would certainly be a shame if that PC RTS talent went to waste.

QFMFT. I hope they make an RTS game before pursuing whatever wacky thing they want to make next.

A spiritual successor to Age of Empires?

That'd be awesome.

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[Zenoth]

I still have my doubts on the results, even if I liked Age of Empires III (although I do still prefer AoE II, and it's not only due to nostalgia, it's actually simply a better game). Just taking what happened with Westwood Studios for instance, some of the guys from WS formed a new development studio, namely Petroglyph, and their last project, Universe at War, is in my humble opinion a very bad game. I must say however that I do like and still regularly play Empire at War and its expansion pack Forces of Corruption. But overall Petroglyph just doesn't even come close to what Westwood Studios was back then.

I also have some hope indeed, I don't only see negatives in that, but forming a completely new development studio usually means taking completely new paths, or refreshing old ones, and that sometimes end up being just a bad decision. They are talented to make RTS games, so I do hope that they do stay on that track. However if they want to "improve" their formula I also wish that they don't try to re-invent the wheel at the same time (such as completely removing base building in Dawn of War II and still calling it a RTS game). My best wishes to the newly formed group, but I won't hold my breath for an Age of Empires II-killer within that franchise (I.E Age of Empires IV).

 

[Maximilian]

Yeah i was really dissapointed in petroglyph. I guess most of the c&c talent went elsewhere, brett sperry and joe bostic were behind TD and RA1, what happened to them??

Anyways i hope robot are more successful than petro were.

 

[TehMac]

Definitely agree with you Zenoth, and yes, Petroglyph was a massive disappointment. At the same time, I can't help feeling with Tony Goodman behind the wheel, things might go well.

http://www.robotentertainment.com/

There's their website with a message that says "stay tuned." Hrmmm...


I want to hope against hope they're going to make an AoE PC game.

 

[Bateluer]

Could they even make an AoE game? They could make a historical strategy game, but I think MS owns the rights to the Age of Empires name.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Could they even make an AoE game? They could make a historical strategy game, but I think MS owns the rights to the Age of Empires name.

Maybe they could change it to Age of Empire or Age of Somethingelse.

 

[TehMac]

Yeah, they technically can't make an AoE game, but it'd be awesome if they made a spiritual successor to AoE.