Ensemble Studios founder creates Robot Entertainment

It's been just under two weeks since Age of Empires and Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios closed its doors and already one of the two previously announced development studios springing from its demise is forming like Voltron -- appropriately, they've named the new studio Robot Entertainment. Tony Goodman, founder of Ensemble Studios way back in January of 1996, appears to be heading up the studio, whose website promises "big ideas" and ... well ... not much else.

Will Robot Entertainment be the studio supporting development of the promised Halo Wars dlc? That remains to be seen but, given co-founder Bruce Shelley's words last month in his final blog post on the community site (which is now shut down), there's roughly a 50/50 chance: "There are at least two new studios being formed by ES [Ensemble Studios] employees and I expect both to do very well." We've put in word to Robot Entertainment for comment and will update this post accordingly as news comes in.

[Via Gamasutra]

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Reader Comments (26)

Robotz

Go Robot.

I will buy all their games :D

Bratz: Mall Shopping RTS confirmed

I'm a man of my word unfortunately....

Super Jonas Brothers confirmed.

Okay you just crossed the line buddy!

Skynet confirmed?

people that create Halo stuff are not smart enough to develop such a feast.

i'd say I was in before the downvotes longhorn, but I downvoted you before I bosted this

But Halo revolutionised FPSs on consoles, and could well do the same with RTSs.

True, it's not *quite* as impressive as creating sentinent AI, but it's still quite an achievement.

Uh-hem Age of Empires.

Longhorn, I am guessing you are too much of a derrr to realize that these are the same guys that made PC hits Age of Empires, and Age of Mythology, which revolutionized the RTS world of today. Oh wait, you were fiddiling your thumbs with Spyro and Crash on the PS1 during that time.

So what if they created those games, they are not capable of creating Skynet, thats just moronic

well no shit, Skynet's a fictional world conquering AI. But there's no reason to say that people who make Halo are stupid, that's just asinine and makes you look like a childish idiotic fanboy

What I am trying to say, which you don't understand it seems, is that you are bashing on one of the top RTS makers in gaming today. But instead you are looking at the fact that they made a Halo RTS, and calling em stupid, you know what, I would feel a lot better if you overlooked the fact they made a Halo RTS, and instead bashed them and said they were stupid because they created AoE and AoM, though that will likely tick off every PC gamer reading this article.

I think we all saw this coming, but it's good to hear anyway

That's awesome... Halo Wars seems really fun... the demo does anyway.

The name could've been something a bit more inventive though.

Will they make music for people with robot ears?

I wish them the best. With their work on Age of Empires and a promising release in Halo Wars it seems they have talent in developing RTS games. Hopefully they can continue to make RTS games for consoles and show other developers how it is done.

I certainly hope they won't waste their time with Halo Wars DLC if they promise "big ideas". Wouldn't that be a job for the people who remain in the MGS structure anyway? And I hope they stay away from Microsoft. They just closed their successful studio, remember?

In MS's defence, Ensemble were producing very little and were very expensive to keep open. With today's econemy, it was inevitable. They'd be pretty stupid to hold a grudge against the 360 because of that.

Halo Wars is nothing revolutionary, but it didn't need to be, it's still a very fun game, and I'm looking forward to whatever else these guys produce :)

So why didn't they kill Rare already? Ensemble's games always endend up selling at least 2 million copies.

Well, how many games have Ensemble made in the past few years? Rare have made quite a few games for the 360 and despite the naysayers, the majority of them have been pretty good.

They're probably banking on one of them eventually actually selling..

They've probably been working on Halo Wars since right after the AoE III expansion, so I don't believe for one second that Microsoft let them just being idle. Look, Microsoft's strategy is pretty obvious : they've been closing down every single PC devs they had, regardless of profitability. It has nothing to do with Ensemble's performance, really.

I love them name! Robot Entertainment! Excellent!

Good to see studios forming from the dissolved Ensemble Studios. Which is still rather a dissapointment. Not sure why they would dissolve such a good RTS developer but.. ahh well.

Ensemble Studios founder creates Robot Entertainment

Reader Comments (26)

Posted: Feb 14th 2009 8:07PM Railgun said

Posted: Feb 14th 2009 8:15PM Jacksons said

Posted: Feb 14th 2009 8:16PM The Kong said

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Posted: Feb 14th 2009 10:55PM The Kong said

Posted: Feb 15th 2009 12:31AM Sly C said

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Posted: Feb 15th 2009 12:36PM Marius said

Posted: Feb 15th 2009 3:23PM TheDarkWayne said

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Posted: Feb 14th 2009 8:59PM TheDarkWayne said

Posted: Feb 14th 2009 9:36PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 14th 2009 10:01PM MasterYogurt said

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Posted: Feb 15th 2009 4:31AM Serious Kriss said

Posted: Feb 15th 2009 4:50AM Snowblind said

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Posted: Feb 15th 2009 3:00PM Deck said

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