In 1995 Ensemble Studios formed as an independent studio and kicked out a little game franchise known as Age of Empires. The title has received many accolades from the first in the franchise extended out to all the Age of Empires releases and spin-offs, all-in-all selling millions of copies.
Ensemble Studios had a mission “to create great games and a great place to work,” says Bruce Shelley from Ensemble Studios. Bruce Shelley also helped design Sid Meier’s Civilization and Railroad Tycoon with MicroProse prior to his work at Ensemble Studios. Now, however, he’s a bit upset at the closing of Ensemble Studios because they were profitable, created top-quality titles and had a great working environment.
Ensemble Studios, from his perspective at least, was a place you’d go to work and be happy with what you’re doing. When you’re working along nicely and become blind-sided by the news, it’s not surprising he didn’t take it lightly.
“Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.” (ensemblestudios.com)
What’s the future plans for Ensemble Studios? As we’ve stated before, they plan to live on in spirit, within the bounds of a new name and a new game plan. “I believe the spirit and mission of ES will be carried forward in this new company if enough of the key leaders agree to take part, which I expect to happen. There has been no announcement about what the new studio will be working on when it gets going,” says Shelley.
This is a horrible way to have to launch a hot new intellectual property. Usually creating a new title with a building fanbase would lead to excitement, parties and high hopes for the future of the franchise. Instead, people will be dusting off their resume in hopes to continue a life of game development.
Hopefully the leaders will indeed form a brand new company and build brand new hot products with their entire staff intact. Then, take their titles to a different publisher (besides Microsoft) and make some money and fans.
Major Nelson outlined some of the new features coming to Dashboard and the Xbox 360. Besides the avatar feature, which is cute, we’re going to have the ability to install games directly to the hard drive and play them.
how do u copy games on to the hard drive
Wait for the fall update, then you’ll have the ability to.
lol when that in Australia?
USA is Sept. 26. Not sure about Australia, since Fall there is… Spring here. :p
is there other way to play the games from the hard drive without the updates; that is legal
No, not really, not officially and not that I know of.
And by the way, Quyen, you can’t run the game without the disc. Installing the game just allows faster load times.
i know that, i will still have the disc in the drive, i just want to load from the HHD so it doesn’t make that loud load sound.
I’d love the ability to play straight from the HDD because my kids are young and keep ruining disks by scratching them as they never put them back in the box. It costs a fortune! It’s a pity game images can’t somehow be coded to each xbox to stop pirate copies going about, but I guess this will never happen. DVDs are a useless format, they’re just not robust enough.
It’s pretty annoying. If I pay £40 for a game £39 is for the licence, the other £1 is for the disk. Yet if the disk gets damaged I have to pay for the licence again .. that’s not right!
That thought hasn’t even crossed my mind, but so true. Sometimes I open the Xbox 360 and there are TWO disks inside… my son likes to hit eject and stuff things into it.
The 360 is a bit too low, he can reach it. Playing off the hard disk would solve some of that for me.
I’m just happy it’ll eliminate “dirty disc” problems.
is the new update out yet over there?
the update is out today the 19th of november not 26th of september
We got the update in the UK the other day, works a treat.
Much better loading from the Hard Drive, soo smooth and much faster.
Wouldn’t it be possible to just copy a DVD with the ISO file of the game and leave that in the drive whilst loading it from the HD? Obviously I’m not intending this, just curious 🙂
I think Microsoft would frown at pushing ISO’s to the hard disk. I’m sure they’re not making a direct ISO image (mainly for security reasons).
It’s probably a more proprietary image copy.
It their anyway to play the games without the disk being in the HD, because the game is downloading onto the HD, so i would think there is a way to play it without the disk ? any answers to my theory ?
This disk must be present in the drive for security reasons. This avoids people getting “copies” on their hard disk without purchasing the game. The standard 360 security testing is done somewhere on the CD to validate it’s a real non-pirated copy of the game.
The point of download-to-disk is to avoid slow loads and the loud whine of the CD player (which is way too loud in my opinion) – not to remove the annoyance of needing the disk.
In addition, there’s almost no chance of a “dirty disc” error since the system only needs to do a DRM check, and no other disc access.
So their won’t be any updates on copying disks to the hardrive and playing it without the game?
I highly doubt you’ll see any such updates, no. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. This is Microsoft’s promise to the developer that their software is safe(r) from piracy.
thats ridiculous cos you would save loads of money just renting the games and coping them to your hard drive, with out putting the disc , but i have been able to cracked it i can play without disc , ha .
Try it – see what Microsoft does to modded 360’s.
tomyhak, how??
My freind said his xbox doesn’t need the discs :\ but mine does..?
Yes, you can save loads of money by renting and stealing games, unfortunately it’s not really the way a non-hacked system is supposed to play.
There are ways to steal anything; Microsoft is not attempting to build a device that people can freely steal which is why you need to have a legal disc in the drive of a non-hacked console in order for it to function correctly.
I know I know, but I don’t care I want to play without the disc 🙁
There must be a way?
the disk is only needed to boot the system, are we going to get a way to not have to boot with the disk…must be some patch like there is on a pc
i dont understand the need for a 60gb hard drive, so i can stick photo’s and music on it?? why do i want 2 do that? my PC and ipod do that, why do i want another copy on my xbox.
if MS came up with a secure method of storing your games onto the hdd without the disk (eg a one time use validation code which came with the game , similar to a phone top-up voucher) then it would be worth it
Booting from the hd is 100x better. I had to replace my laser in my xbox several times in the past several years and it’s a pain. Booting from the hd is much easier on the laser and hopefully I’ll never need to replace my laser again 😛
I install my “heavy duty use” games to the HD. I’ve installed Rock Band 2 and College Hoops 2K8 for that very purpose.
Look if you want a cheap way of getting games onto your hard disk then do this…………………………………………………………………….
……….. KEEP DREAMING!
listen. the idea of installing the games on the hard drive would have been superb if you didnt need the disk to play them. I am well aware of the situation and i know this idea would decrease profits from games. Soooooo. . . if this is true then who cares if the game is “quieter”?! This feature is just a waste of time and money. Thanks alot microsoft.
P.S. The update keeps making me lag like a jalepeno on a stick.
How about the fact you don’t have to worry about “dirty disc” errors? Oh, and Wallace spells his name “Rasheed”.
How many gigs does the average game come to when playing from the hard drive? Just trying to figure out how many games would fit onto the 20gig drive.
7-9 gigs. You’d better upgrade to 60GB or 120GB.
There are many sizing guides out there to utilize for game sizes, for instance: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=13591900#post13591900
I’ve got a 20GB, I could put a game on the disk since I’ve got about 9GB free. If it’s a game I’m going to play a LOT.
when i try to play my saved ganes to the hard drive i cant play them without the dsic…WTF!
When I finished downloading cod4 i put play disc and it said you need disk in order to play it????? help me out bro
hi all i think there will be a kind of boot up disc out there soon i say this eg: my forza disc has a scuff on it so i used a mates put it on the hd and im able to boot it up with the naff scuffed disc i have. i maybe wrong i dont no but if there is sutch a disc can someone please let me know cheers ps i dont fancy getting banned ether so if it isnt poss let me no on that to thanks pps the email to the link i made up i will look back for the replys thanks
Hi guys i read all your posts and i believe to the fact that the xbox can run a game without a disc. There are two things that prove it:
1)After you download a game using your microsoft points,the game runs directly from the HDD!!
2)I have seen many videos in which the games after being installed on the HDD run properly but unfortunately you need the disc to boot the game!! But after the game has been boted, the disc automatically stops within the disc tray that means the game is running on the data inside the HDD.
Well i have recently got an xbox so can please help me out! I wana play games directly from the HDD without using the disc!! So is that posibile? If yes then please tell me the way?