Relic working on Age of Empires 4

Man. Today we have asked for Relic at the gamescom. Anyone said that they have seen Relic devs but we cant find them. But the Microsoft AoE employees said that AoE 4 will be win10 exclusive and will available at the WinStore only :-/

What did you except exactly ?
Age of empire would be a joke on a console and MICROSOFT is not going to release their game on MAC or LINUX

Mac is owned by apple.
Linux is a third world computer system, no one is using it because it sucks.

This game is going to be win10 only becouse they want to wololo all the win7 users to win10. Apart from that there is no reason why M$ would object to release a linux based game as they are involved in many open source projects including ones like ubuntu linux. They even have ubuntu integration available for home users on win10.

I wont comment on the last sentence as I'm pretty damn sure this site is set up on a linux server.

i think this is great news , AoE2 is what got me into the RTS genre and CoH2 is truly a great game (balance issues aside).
Try and show coh2 to any of ur friends that does not know it and ull notice how great a game it is , it's beautiful really dynamic and really detailed .
Microsoft is a company that knows how to make money , and im sure their choice for relic to develop AoE4 is a thoughtful one, no one does the squad based RTS genre better than relic,and no one does marketing and management like Microsoft does. MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

most notably if is in the same old school rts style of micro-management sim. They need to find a way to keep the heart of aoe while updating it at the same time. add in relic whose rts games have much less economic elements compared to the aoe series and most likely a more modern setting and there is a lot that can go wrong. However there is also a lot that could go right, this could be the shot in the arm rts needs

This is the big question all who have played both games should have.

What i found really interesting/worrying about this combination of Relic + AoE is that they follow completely different RTS approaches. Their styles are too far away from each other IMO if we are to take into account what are the goodies from COH/Homeworld/DoW compared to the more casual/easy to start with AoE but not necessarily easier to master.

Show Spoiler

Before i realised i wrote a wall of text.

TL;DR: excited for the news, worried about how different are Relic and AoE.

To further elaborate on my predictions:
Historical SEGA and Relic both have good business relations with Microsoft. Don't forget that the founder of Relic (Alex Garden) also was a big name in Microsoft gaming development going way back to Homeworld 2 and Impossible Creatures. I'm old school HW fan and former top10 player in that game.
The current Relic boss/GM (Justin Dowdeswell) previously ran MS owned studio called "Bigpark".
So don't underestimate the significance of this new Relic/MS partnership. Creative Assembly have a partnership with both MS and Wargaming. I predicted for a long time these new Relic partnerships was coming but I would have personally preferred Nexon over MS. Several good former Relic and THQ people have worked at Nexon. Klei Entertainment (run by former Relic devs) exist because of Alex Garden/Nexon NA.

THE BIRTH AND RE-BIRTH OF KLEI
https://www.klei.com/

Klei began, like so many independent game studios, in a basement.

After college, Cheng parlayed an internship at Relic Entertainment in Vancouver into a full-time job. He enjoyed his time there and learned a lot, particularly from the company's young co-founder Alex Garden.
*SNIP*
Alex Garden and Jamie Cheng are a lot alike. Garden was hired by Distinction Software at 15. In 1997, the 21-year-old founded Relic Entertainment — the creators of the Homeworld, Warhammer 40,000 and Company of Heroes series — a company the young entrepreneur kept out of debt and employee-owned until its acquisition by THQ in 2004. Garden left shortly thereafter.

In November 2006, South Korean video game publisher Nexon hired Garden to lead its North American game development studio. With an empty production slate, the new boss needed new games. On his list of developers to call: Jamie Cheng, whom he'd hired years ago at Relic.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/5/29/4362838/the-birth-and-re-birth-of-klei

Alex worked for Microsoft from 2011-2014 and Nexon 2006-2009.
I covered some of this in detail with reliable sources here;
SEGA restructuring?

Microsoft chose not to buy Sega because it didn't have the muscle, February 8, 2013
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-chose-not-to-buy-sega-because-it-didnt-have-the-muscle/1100-6403661/

This is old news, but now Sega is getting involved again with Microsoft IPs (Halo "poster child" for Spencer's Windows 10/Xbox) and potential new partnerships are something that can have far reaching consequences for several development studios. Sega got a massive library of IPs through a vast array of genres that MS might want to buy.

In recent 10 years COH anniversary Relic stream, it also was re-confirmed by Quinn Duffy that Microsoft did indeed save Relic with Impossible Creatures published by MS. Relic used money from that game to build their RTS engine. No MS help, No Relic. It's as simple as that. So hate MS all you want, but Relic exists today because of Impossible Creatures.

But I already knew that from HW fans such as ÜberJumper. MS is not perfect but they do have some good people like Phil Spencer and Ed Fries.


As one of the oldest studios in Vancouver, Relic has a rich history with many talented devs that today have created their own independent studios. Most noticeable (Vancouver), Blackbird Interactive (former HW devs), Klei Entertainment (former DoW devs), Smoking Gun Interactive (former COH devs) and Hinterland (former Spacemarine/console devs).

The Unstoppable ÜberJumper (Relicnews Admins)
Relic News Admins (Uberjumper, one of the biggest HW fan) was pretty close to the founders of Relic, had this to say; This will also be an interesting read into the history of the Essence Engine (improved version used for DoW3).

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeworld/comments/2wxhuv/homeworld_2_e3_2001_trailer_full_version/

I'm a guy that happened to live in Vancouver and liked video games. I saw the Homeworld trailer on the HL disk IIRC... thinking "That's dumb, who'd want to play Starcraft in 3d..."
Penny-arcade was raving about it, so when I saw news the demo was out in August of 1999 I downloaded it on a whim (a whole 65 MB or so).
I fell in love almost immediately. It felt like Battlestar Galactica, Starwars, Starblazers... all rolled into one. I was hooked.
I had trouble alt-tabbing out of the game... so I was trying to troubleshoot it. Went looking for forums... found Relic's website... they were in Vancouver! Hey I know that guy!
Couldn't find a post about my problem, so figured out the issue and posted it. Then stuck around to help other Homeworlders, then Impossible creature players, then HW2, dawn of war, company of heroes... 50 or 60 thousand posts later I was one of the most well known members of the "Relic Community". I also helped run relicnews.com, which for a few years was the unofficial official forums (Bart Mazus, another local guy owned Relicnews.com and was doing website work for Relic). Went to a couple of E3's, wrote a few articles and a few hundred news posts, etc etc.
So yeah, they had me as their number one fan for a while, I worked on HW2 as a contractor (I tell that story in another post), and in 2010, Rob Cunningham invited me over to show me the pitch video for what was Hardware (now Homeworldhipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
So yeah, some lucky guy that got to watch and help an awesome game community grow and made some awesome friends along the way.

The Moderator Interviews: The Unstoppable ÜberJumper (relic news admins)
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?132532-The-Moderator-Interviews-The-Unstoppable-%C3%9CberJumper

Obtuse: I noticed the note in your yearbook entry, "Contract @ Relic Summer ‘03", how did that come about and what did you do there?

ÜberJumper: Well... I don't know how much you know about the History of Relic and Sierra, so I'll go back a bit. Homeworld was a successful product, didn't cost Sierra much to make, but Relic had to offer up their next 3 titles to Sierra before anyone else could bid on them. Relic started work on Impossible Creatures (which Sierra passed on, and Microsoft published), and there was another title that Sierra passed on as well (I think) then finally Homeworld 2. Relic had been working on Homeworld 2 since almost the end of Homeworld. I was there for a visit in July of 2000 IIRC with a couple of community folks (RipperT and Carradine). We sat in on a dev meeting, saw the game in action, played with it a bit, had lunch with them, it was all good. The Next E3 rolls around, and before that started, Sierra launched the now infamous Homeworld2.com site which had a timer on it counting down to the game's launch, so, I book a flight to LA for E3.

Meanwhile, Relic and Sierra are having some issues over money (which is what a lot of developers go through I hear), and the E3 display of Homeworld 2, and the launch of the website are cancelled. Anyway, while I was there, I got a chance to see Homeworld 2 (in it's then current form) and I was gob-smacked. Flash forward a couple of months to August and news breaks that Sierra had cancelled Homeworld 2. So the game, at that point, is Dead. I hang out for a while longer in the community, and when I think it's clear that Homeworld's not going anywhere, I "left" the community. Alex Garden heard that, and called me up and offered to take me to lunch. He convinced me to stay with the community, that it wasn't dead yet, so I hung out for a while longer. May of 2002 rolls around, and Relic's started work up again on Homeworld 2. They're hiring folks to fill positions that they'd had to let go as HW2 had been stopped (this is when Mecha, long time community member, moved over from England to work on HW2) so anyway, they're working away and basically starting from scratch, but Sierra's not the same Sierra that helped Relic birth Homeworld. They didn't put as much effort into it as they could have. Turn-around time on bug tracking and what not was essentially not happening, so they needed to bring people in to test.

Pike and I were both contracted to do "first pass QA" (credited as additional design support in the credits) on the game. I was working a full time job, getting to Relic at 4pm, working till 10-11pm, then heading home. That was for all of July. The game went gold first week of August and it still needed way more QA on it but it ended Relic's contractual obligations to Sierra and let THQ buy them up. I actually had a chance to see some of the DoW stuff while I was working there, was pretty cool, the early DoW stuff that is.

There goes the CoH3 dream for us WW2 enthusiasts. Could not care less about AoE, however much I played it 15 years ago.

the 1999-gameplay of AoE is boring and overrated

There goes the CoH3 dream for us WW2 enthusiasts. Could not care less about AoE, however much I played it 15 years ago.

Quinn Duffy to VideoGamer.com in 2012 about the future of COH3:
https://www.videogamer.com/news/company-of-heroes-could-move-out-of-wwii

"As we go forward, if we wanted to do Company of Heroes 3 in 2190 we could," Duffy continued, "because we know what we want to do to make it feel like a Company of Heroes game."

Later, Duffy added: "We wanted to take the element of WWII out of the creative vision and focus for the game moving forward. It is setting-agnostic. Company of Heroes doesn't have to be a World War II game. You can set it in modern times in Fallujah, you could set it in the past."

Recent reddit discussions about this;
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/66w8mk/relic_if_we_wanted_to_do_company_of_heroes_3_in/

From the Age of Empires III artbook;

Ensemble Studios pic above seems authentic. It's from the Age of Empires III artbook. Allegedly full page ads were also used in gaming magazines.

You can see it briefly in this video (0:07)


Phil Spencer said in recent interviews that he wants to bring AoE to a more "modern audience". Whatever that means who knows.

Age of Empires 2017 gamescom stream:
Duffy appear 16:07 and AoE4 announcement is at the end


Ideally, with Relic's continuous growth they should have the ability to work on more than one big game at a time. IMO, from 2013-2015 it was DoW3/CoH2, 2015-2017 DoW3/AoE4 (after british expansion) and hopefully, soon it will be AoE4/CoH3.
Also, it looks like Microsoft devs will cooperate to make AoE4. MS has been looking for new RTS devs since 2015 (around same time Relic gave up on COH2 5 years plan).
Even the COH2 brand manager is now officially working on AoE4.
https://twitter.com/alexdlmr?lang=da
Imagine this possible announcement; former Ensemble devs work with Relic to make AoE4.

Read and learn;
Microsoft launches new RTS studio, lists job openings - 2015
https://www.kitguru.net/professional/development/jon-martindale/microsoft-launches-new-rts-studio-lists-job-openings/

This isn’t some big official announcement, but a sneak reveal that came out of a Microsoft job posting for a senior software engineer. The position is for someone looking to “create the next-generation of awesome games for Windows and Xbox!,” as part of the Decisive Games team. The new developer is based in Redmond, WA in the USA and will be “building a studio that will bring the next instalment in a beloved strategy game franchise to the next generation of gamers around the world.”

That could very well mean Age of Empires four.

After DoW3 failures, SEGA is looking for something that can give them more brand recognition with their 2020 plan. But I don't think COH3 alone is enough to keep Relic running and growing with new talent.
Recruiting new RTS talent are not exactly easy these days. Who else than Relic are still making AAA RTS games? It's a short list. The majority of good AAA RTS studios have either gone defunct or moved on to greener pasture. Blizzard with Warcraft/SC is practically the only "potential" good AAA RTS studio left and I don't think Blizzard devs have high interest in joining Relic.

Ideally, with Relic's continuous growth they should have the ability to work on more than one big game at a time

Hopefully, yes. In practice? They struggled to maintain CoH2 balance while working on DoW3, so it would be a bit daring to imagine they will be working on AoE4 and CoH3 simultaneously.

INB4 horrendous game engine and disingenuous developer mega-combo.

inb4 windows 10 store exclusive.

Pretty much a given, unless they learned from Halo 2 Wars...

Maybe this AoE4 could be a CoH like game who cover the era of the WW1, WW2 and modern times.

EDIT: My bad I did not see the other topic

I was hoping for that, but the reveal trailer ends with images of colonial times.

To further elaborate on my predictions:...

Thanks for the well written, informative, and interesting read!

I was hoping for that, but the reveal trailer ends with images of colonial times.

Read between the lines, so you can begin to see whats really going on. AoE4 will either make or break the COH team. So time to cross your fingers.

IMHO, modern warfare could be in an expansion. At face value, Creative Assembly would have been a better fit to create AoE4 but MS/SEGA decided they wanted the COH team, why?. At face value this does not make much sense, so you have to dig deeper.

Arch Warhammer explanation/predictions:


Please keep in mind this will be the team (or big part of) that is going to make COH3. Look at those involved at www.linkedin.com. Many of the COH2 leaders/managers have recently updated their profiles.
Yes, it's pretty strange to see the COH team working on AoE4. Could be to just "pay the bills" until COH3 or it could be something else.

Unfortunately, this could mean COH3 will be delayed by a few years. When COH2 started to fail financial, I suspect Relic wanted to start working on COH3. I guess SEGA at that time was not ready to invest a lot of money into that. If AoE4 mean COH3 will end up with a pretty large budget I can wait.
In recent 10 years COH anniversary Relic stream, Quinn Duffy could barely get himself to talk about making money from COH2. It was almost comical for me to watch. I wish Quinn Duffy would grow some balls and just tell us the truth about COH2 rather going willy–nilly.
Duffy said they needed to "make money" so they could continue making "great games" (COH3).

Quinn Duffy is the historical guy in Relic, he does not want to work on "space marines".
The COH/AoE team need to tell SEGA the truth what went wrong with COH2 financially. There is no failures, only feedback. You know?, hiding from your own shadow does not make it go away.
Personal, I have zero grudges against Relic, I just want them to learn from the feedback.

IMO, if Relic looks at all the P2W sentiments/negative feedback from DLC commanders I think you'll have a big clue. Unbalanced commanders was a train wreck from day one and Warspoils only delayed the inevitable conclusion to a failed DLC commander system. I bet they were planning to continue with the same DLC bonanza/Bait-and-switch in DoW3 without telling us just like COH2. I guess gamers are not stupid after all, huh?.
https://galyonk.in/why-paid-games-are-adding-micro-payments-526f358426c6

Players hate bait and switch. Players hate when they’re lied to, when they’re deceived, when the product they’ve paid for is gone and is replaced with something else.

That’s why free-to-play originally got a lot of hate — because the term itself is deceiving. Free-to-play games aren’t 100% free as in a beer, they’re only free to some extent. We just got used to it by now.

DoW3 is dead but I'm sure they have a backup plan or there would be big laid off happening soon. They just hired a second executive producer for this and had this job description open for almost a year since the other executive abruptly left 1 year before DoW launch (Stephen MacDonald).
So practically DoW3 was without an executive producer for almost a year. The other executive producer (Greg Wilson/former COH2) was working on AoE4.

I’m incredibly proud to be working as the Executive Producer on Age of Empires IV.

As a studio, we are so excited to bring the next installment of this iconic franchise back to the forefront of gaming and into the hands of its beloved community.

Check out the announcement trailer from Gamescom below.

Greg Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-wilson-2ba7046/?ppe=1

So was Stephen fired or did he leave voluntary? Stephen abruptly left when Relic had just updated their website with new studio leadership profile. It was confirmed he was to lead a team of 70+ devs. Looks like an internal conflict to me.
The new executive producer/studio leadership is David Littman who just started working at Relic.
Job title; "Production Leader Creating AAA Games at Relic Entertainment"

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-littman-52668b27/
Relic Executive Producer:

I have been lucky enough to be part of the video game industry for 16 years and since 2007 I have been leading and running AAA teams and franchises at EA and Telltale Games.

The games and entertainment experiences I have led have been enjoyed by over 15 million people around the world and have earned these companies 3/4 of a billion dollars.

While this is a great outcome, my day to day passion comes from building great teams, working with amazing people, removing roadblocks, and enabling a great culture.

http://jobs.gamasutra.com/job/executive-producer-vancouver-british-columbia-31496

We are also hiring for another unannounced project so I encourage you to keep your eyes peeled on our careers page (www.relic.com/careers) to join the fun!

Nadine Blackie, Talent Acquisition Lead | Relic Entertainment

Was expecting CoH 3 with Pacific or Africa theme, I'll guess I'll have to wait some more years

Pretty much a given, unless they learned from Halo 2 Wars...


I was hoping for that, but the reveal trailer ends with images of colonial times.

The trailer itself ends up with two pictures. One shows redcoats firing in a line which could possibly be american war of independence or napoleonic wars. The other shows a samurai. When you add the words that are being spoken: "Together we have battled through history. Now a new age is upon us" It gives the idea that the next settings may be mid and late period of 19th century, with all the "new age" equipment like gatling, automatic rifles and monitors.

That would be cool becouse it fits AoE much more than WW2 and has some interesting historical settings for campaign and faction design that have really low coverage in strategy games. For example:

• opium wars and chineese rebelions
  
• the spring of nations
  
• american civil war
  
• the fall of shogunate in japan
  
• prussian - austrian war
  
• consolidation of germany and italy
  
• german - french war
  
• british - zulu war
  

and so on. All of these have the sense of "new age" or "new world order", becouse they changed history so much and becouse most of these wars were won with technology advantage.

On the other hand, the choice of relic may mean that they want to skip all of that and feel the "new age" is ww2. That would be easiest for relic since they would just make coh with resource gathering added, but would also make a game much less of a AoE.

To be honest i cant wait to know what time they will use for the AoE 4 scenario.
All in all i cant see a World war based scenario because such a scenario wouldnt fit into the AoE gameplay (Collect resources for your army?).
But AoE is about building an Empire. So i wouldnt drop the "world war theme" at all here. That is the reason why i would be happy about a 1815~1918 time frame (From the Congress of Vienna to the Great War).
Why do i prefer such an time frame. Well. It is the "last" time for empires to rise and fall. The European (and the USA) nations were rushing over the world to find new resources and new land to conquer and colonize. It is a time with massive technological improvements (from the Montgolfiere to the aircraft). Out of my view it would be last era to work with static game elements (forts, towers, walls, defence stuff). You could implement a lot of stuff and weapons here. Relic could add content and mechanics they are familiar with (firearms, cover system, perhaps doctrines or national focus?) to add new elements to the classic AoE gamedesign.
Like i said: I cant wait to get more information.

To be honest i cant wait to know what time they will use for the AoE 4 scenario.
All in all i cant see a World war based scenario because such a scenario wouldnt fit into the AoE gameplay (Collect resources for your army?).
But AoE is about building an Empire. So i wouldnt drop the "world war theme" at all here. That is the reason why i would be happy about a 1815~1918 time frame (From the Congress of Vienna to the Great War).
Why do i prefer such an time frame. Well. It is the "last" time for empires to rise and fall. The European (and the USA) nations were rushing over the world to find new resources and new land to conquer and colonize. It is a time with massive technological improvements (from the Montgolfiere to the aircraft). Out of my view it would be last era to work with static game elements (forts, towers, walls, defence stuff). You could implement a lot of stuff and weapons here. Relic could add content and mechanics they are familiar with (firearms, cover system, perhaps doctrines or national focus?) to add new elements to the classic AoE gamedesign.
Like i said: I cant wait to get more information.

Although people really did not like Age of Empires III compared to Age of Empires II, it did bring some interesting features for players. One of them was advancing to the next age, but there were two options on how to advance to the next age. Relic could build upon this with some interesting mechanics involved that could change the gameplay without getting rid of the traditional gameplay most AoE players enjoyed.

The other feature that AoEIII had was the home city feature, which was basically AoE's own version for off-map units/resources. Considering that Relic also does this in their titles, they could take to a new level that could benefit players without being a distraction as well.

I could go into theories on how Age of Empires could direct itself, but I think it's safe to say that Relic has to put plenty of effort into execution in order to attract the slowly dwindling RTS gamers out there.

LOL

Don't get hyped for Age of Empires 4

http://www.thedailystar.net/shout/overclock/dont-get-hyped-age-empires-4-1456363

LOL

Don't get hyped for Age of Empires 4

http://www.thedailystar.net/shout/overclock/dont-get-hyped-age-empires-4-1456363

Thx for the link but nothing is set in stone yet when it comes to steam. After DoW3 fail, I doubt SEGA Europe will allow Relic to be used as "collateral damage" in a platform war.
The good news is that Relic gets to work on a large AoE4 budget. This game will definitely bring in some new talent to Relic. They have a pretty large talent team now compared to 2013.
Creative Assembly is gearing up as well and released a "recruitment video" to acquire new talent.
https://www.creative-assembly.com/careers

The Windows Store gears up for all-out war with Steam
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3049669/software-games/the-windows-store-gears-up-for-all-out-war-with-steam.html

Halo Wars: Definitive Edition launching on Steam and the Windows Store on April 20
https://www.windowscentral.com/halo-wars-definitive-edition-launching-steam-xbox-one-windows-10-april-20

Halo Wars on Steam is first online Halo game to rely on Steamworks
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/halo-wars-on-steam-might-be-first-online-halo-game-without-xbox-live/

Why Xbox Boss Wants To Co-Exist With Sony | E3 2017 GameSpot Show

Microsoft executives are not in full agreement on these platform wars so they don't really have a coherent strategy right now. On Xbox, Phil Spencer is working on pro-consumer deals with Sony and essentially raised the white flag.
Phil Spencer the peace maker? Until MS fire him, I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt.

If you really want to know about the internal conflicts going on in MS gaming group. Look into what Ed Fries has said as former top Microsoft executive. There are both good (pro-consumer) and bad gaming leaders in MS. But it's not just MS, there has been a big war going on behind the scenes of every major gaming publishers. Using reliable sources I have talked about this "war" or "internal conflicts" in other posts. I have covered Nexon (big Asian FTP publisher), Valve, SEGA and the internal conflicts going on in EA.
Informed consumers, in general, make smart choices which then "speak" truth to power and help change the status quo. That's what I believe; ending all the secrecy and moving forward with transparent business models. There is nothing wrong with making money, but deceiving consumers intentional is just wrong.

From the owner of http://steamspy.com/;
https://galyonk.in/why-paid-games-are-adding-micro-payments-526f358426c6

Players hate bait and switch. Players hate when they’re lied to, when they’re deceived, when the product they’ve paid for is gone and is replaced with something else.

That’s why free-to-play originally got a lot of hate — because the term itself is deceiving. Free-to-play games aren’t 100% free as in a beer, they’re only free to some extent.

Want to know how the "bad guys" in the gaming industry look at the "consumer". Insiders call it; "whale hunting".

The Whales of Microtransactions, and the Elephant in the Room
https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-whales-of-microtransactions-and-the-elephant-in-the-room

Nexon: We need to focus on heart first and money second
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-06-nexon-we-need-to-focus-on-heart-first-and-money-second
"I don't want to criticise the industry too much, but I think all of us who are executives, who are responsible for spending money and investing capital in the games industry have done a disservice to the industry by focusing on money first and hearts second," he told GamesIndustry.biz

How Electronic Arts stopped being the worst company in America
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-electronic-arts-stopped-being-the-worst-company-in-america/

https://twitter.com/ed_fries?lang=da
Halo 2600's Ed Fries - "Making Stuff" - D.I.C.E. 2014 Summit



Original Microsoft Game Studios boss Ed Fries discusses his career at Xbox, including when he bought Bungie for Microsoft and more!

Matt Chat 278: Why Ed Fries Quit Microsoft

https://www.engadget.com/2007/12/12/wow-insider-interviews-ed-fries-founder-of-figureprints/

And so I was just very into videogames, always have been, and I kind of got sick of working on Office after doing that for two years, and took over a small group that was just gaming stuff at Microsoft and started to grow it. There were about 50 people when I started the games group, and there were about 1200 when I left, and we grew a big PC gaming business-released games like Age of Empires, and Microsoft Flight Simulator, and a bunch of other stuff, and Xbox came along, worked a bunch on Xbox, getting Halo and a bunch of other titles.

As long as Relic is held to boundries of an excisting concept and has good financial freedom, it will not repeat the fiasco vanilla production and launch of CoH2 and the horrible DOW III joke of a game.

If their leash it let loose, we are in for a rough AoE reboot and most likely a dead lelic lol.