Gaming Podcast is back after the one week break, and finally truly weighs in on the announcement of the Switch – and aren’t impressed. What does impress the crew is the latest addition to the survival horror genre, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which takes the radical approach of being a survival horror game. They also ponder about how great a Zelda/Minecraft game would be.
The next episode will be Gaming Podcast’s 10th anniversary, so longtime listeners are encouraged to write in.
The massacre continues at Telltale Games, and the crew discuss the ramifications in this episode. TJ complains about the new Skype incoming call music, and the Gaming Flashback this week is the short-lived 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia. There’s also a new Gaming History, discussing an infamous incident in World of Warcraft back in 2005.
This week’s news includes:
All this and Listener Feedback. Let us know what you think of the Telltale closure.
Ensemble Studios, owned and operated by Microsoft or, Microsoft Games Studios, has been targed to be dissolved. All employees will find new homes, a large quantity will start a new studio and continue maintaining the later released Halo Wars franchise.
Microsoft has chosen to close the studio as part of their growth plan of Microsoft Games Studios much like FASA was closed in the past. The difference, there is a new landing point for Halo Wars unlike the uncertain future of Shadowrun.
Commenting on the reason for the closure, Microsoft said, “This was a fiscally rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth path. While the decision to dissolve Ensemble was not an easy one, Microsoft is working to place as many Ensemble employees who do not move to the newly formed studio into open positions within Microsoft as possible.” (gamespot)
Ensemble Studio’s folks will continue to work with Microsoft and will continue to support Halo Wars after its launch. It is important to stress their statement of continuing to support Halo Wars, there is no need to think the project will be done half-assed or without pride as the project will live on with a different studio name.
The only question is… what is causing Microsoft to close down studios with actively working real franchise projects? FASA went down, Bungie was let go on their own and now Ensemble Studios? There has to be something going on here… idea?
This week we check out Paradox Interactive’s showcase, as well as the following news:
Let us know what you think of Paradox’s lineup.
Nintendo should make money off its intellectual property accumulated over the past decades; I’m sure that a lot of people would like to own an online library like that of Steam, Origin, Uplay, and etc. exclusively of Nintendo games.