...which I coincidentally listened to via Audible today. There’s a lot more to the story than, “...shut them down... for insufficient profits.” They wanted to branch out from the RTS genre, prototyped a bunch of different ideas, but didn’t really get far enough (or enough traction with MSFT, which wrote their checks) to ship them. Microsoft was wary of them launching new IP, so tasked them with making Halo Wars, which was an RTS for consoles. This was a drastically different undertaking than RTS-for-PCs due to controllers (instead of keyboards + mice), and they all got burned out working on it after many years. Microsoft shut them down after Halo Wars shipped.
https://www.npr.org/2017/09/05/547367445/-blood-sweat-and-pi...
...which I coincidentally listened to via Audible today. There’s a lot more to the story than, “...shut them down... for insufficient profits.” They wanted to branch out from the RTS genre, prototyped a bunch of different ideas, but didn’t really get far enough (or enough traction with MSFT, which wrote their checks) to ship them. Microsoft was wary of them launching new IP, so tasked them with making Halo Wars, which was an RTS for consoles. This was a drastically different undertaking than RTS-for-PCs due to controllers (instead of keyboards + mice), and they all got burned out working on it after many years. Microsoft shut them down after Halo Wars shipped.