Age of Empires III

Valve has revealed Steams top ten selling products for the week ending on January 21st. New titles and discounts abound on the chart for the past seven days, but again a familiar face holds the premiere spot.

The only Mod which allows players to choose all 14 known nations and 8 new ones with a full working homecity. TFE Launcher and easy install program included. No savegame cities like other mods deal with.

Ensemble Studios founder Bruce Shelley stated that he felt Age of Empires III was a huge mistake, and that they deviated too far from what made the first two games classics. Shelley lamented, With Age of Empires 3 we tried all of these new ideas. I think it was a huge mistake. We wanted to create something that was 30 percent the same, 30 percent borrowed and 30 percent innovative. I think we tried to do too much.

This doesn't seem to be some kind of pricing error on Microsoft's part. It seems that they're really trying hard to get people to check out their new GFW marketplace.

Electronic Theatre reports on the announcement that veterans from Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and NCsoft have formed a new developer, En Masse Entertainment, primarily concerned with delivering high-quality MMO products.

Robot Entertainment announced today the formation of its new game development studio in Plano, Texas. Founded by many of the original founders of Ensemble Studios, Robot has a staff of 45 comprised entirely of former Ensemble employees. Robot's team developed the hit franchise Age of Empires, selling over 20 million units worldwide, and the soon-to-be released Halo Wars for Xbox 360. Tony Goodman, the founder of Ensemble, is the CEO of Robot.

Following an unveiling last week, Robot Entertainment has officially announced itself today, confirming that the independent studio is in fact made up of Ensemble veterans. Starting where Ensemble ended after it was closed by Microsoft, Robot is developing additional content for the now deceased studio's final project, the Xbox 360 strategy title Halo Wars...

Ensemble Studios, creator of the Age of Empires series all the way to the upcoming Halo Wars game, has been a dominating developer for Real Time Strategy (RTS) games. Ensemble cranked out a total of ten RTS games including Halo Wars and expansion packs, most if not all of which were high-rated top sellers.

Soon-to-be-closed Ensemble Studios will have some form of successor, according to developer Graeme Devine. In September Microsoft announced plans to shut down the Age of Empires creators, much to the dismay of RTS fans around the world. There's a new studio forming that will rise from Ensemble, Devine confirmed to VideoGamer.com last week. They haven't announced specific plans, so I can't comment on that. Microsoft is looking at people to find them homes, but frankly right now we're just focusing on finishing the darn game and making sure that's job number one. I don't think anyone has really thought much beyond that yet. Let's get Halo Wars finished. In this industry, you're only as good as your last game.

Mythic Boss Mark Jacobs has commented on how feels the closure of Ensemble Studios is a terrible thing but that his studio has been careful to guard against mistakes.