The life and death of Ensemble Studios

Maybe its staff wasn't surprised, but it was quite a shock to us when the plug was pulled on Ensemble Studios five months before the release of its baby, Halo Wars. Now, after reading a post-mortem delivered by studio founder Bruce Shelley yesterday at D.I.C.E., we finally feel like we have a firmer grasp on exactly what went wrong.

It seems that not just one factor was behind Ensemble's demise, everything from lack of diversification to fragmentation among the staff played a role. If you're as curious as we are about how a profitable studio can still go under, you should absolutely give his discussion a look.