Bonfire’s Bill Jackson talks about opening a new studio in the current economic climate
Joystiq have had a quick few words with Bill Jackson the ex Producer at Ensemble Studios who has joined the Bonfire venture. He discussed briefly the last 12 months and says that despite what has happened with Ensemble “It’s actually a great time to work on innovative game designs and think about ways to change our business models to support those games.”
The full article can be read here: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/17/weathering-the-economic-storm-start-ups-speak-out/
Robots at work; Halo Wars.com gets re-branded and DLC coming
Halo Wars fans who often visit the official Halo Wars community website may have noticed that as of yesterday the site had been re-branded from Ensemble Studios to Robot Entertainment. Whilst I am pleased that Robot get to make their mark its somewhat sad that the Ensemble name has been removed.
Robot Entertainment folk are working on Halo Wars DLC which I imagine will be announced in the next few weeks. It is unknown whether the DLC will completely or partially re-brand the game to Robot Entertainment. Tony Goodman’s crew are staying zipped about what the DLC is going to include. Good news is however in traditional Ensemble fashion they are actively listening to fans and players on the forums. You can catch people like Dave Pottinger and Jerome Jones who were both leads on Halo Wars browsing the forums. Just look for the Robot logo under their names.
Of course another thing we can expect soon is the launch of the Robot Entertainment website which has been displaying a splash screen for quite a while; keep checking back here by adding us to your RSS feed and we’ll let you know when it goes live.
A few other updates…
I know I’ve promised updates to the Bruce Shelley and Ben Donges blogs, I’ll try to get them up soon.
Oh, and, I’m sorry to report that ES_Paragon and ES_Solus are no longer with the Ensemble crew at Robot or Bonfire, but are pursuing other opportunities. We wish them good luck with that. 🙂
