Mysterious “Age of Empires” press folder revealed to be announced as a Age 3 Collectors edition

The mysterious press folder found on a website which handles Microsoft press releases for the games division has finally been filled with Age of Empires content. Unfortunately it is not a new Age of Empires game as first hoped. Instead Microsoft will finally release all three Age of Empires 3 games (the original plus the two expansions). Until now only Age 3 and the Warchiefs expansion have been bundled together and players have had to purchase the Asian Dynasties separately. Now all the Age 3 content can be picked up in one handy box set.

Interestingly and sadly, this may be the last box art which we see bearing the Ensemble Studios logo having first thought Halo Wars may be the last.

So where does this leave the Age of Empires series going forward? It has been reported before in a gamesindustry.biz interview with Phil Spencer of Microsoft Game Studios that:

And we do have a plan for Age of Empires, and it is something we’ll continue to push, it just didn’t require that we had Ensemble Studios as an entity inside of MGS in Dallas, as full time internal employees, as a studio that would be the sole source of Age content going forward.

So hmm.. lets hope there is a plan for more new Age content going forward hopefully to be developed by ex Ensemble teams.