Ensemble made the Age of Empire series. Which [[link]] was hugely successful. Ensemble were, however, recently shut down. Was it because they were too successful? A former employee thinks so.

https://kotaku.com/microsoft-confirms-ensemble-closure-announces-new-de-5047485

David Rippy – who is now in charge of Bonfire Studios, and leading a team of other ex-Ensemble employees – says the former Age of Empires developer went down because it had been pigeon-holed as an RTS specialist.

With the [[link]] cost of creating games so high, studios are almost forced to diversify [[link]] across platforms. Aside from the financial risk of sticking to one platform or one genre, you also risk being pigeonholed in the industry.

Ensemble was kind of a victim of its own success as an RTS shop. As hard as we tried, we were never able to have one of our non-RTS prototypes greenlit, largely because we were ‘the RTS guys’.

I’d like to sympathise, but really, Relic and Creative Assembly seem to be doing OK.

https://kotaku.com/pc-sales-charts-the-thin-red-line-5167124

Ensemble Studios a “victim of its own success” – Bonfire [GI.biz]