Ensemble Studios, the developers of Halo Wars and known for the Age of Empires games have announced that they will be shutting down after the release of Halo Wars. Not only that but today they announced that they are giving the axe to all non-essential employees as well as employees not directly related to the Halo Wars project. All the members that will stay onboard are being offered incentives to stay with the studio until the game is complete. More after the jump. What on earth is going on at Ensemble? Why would the studio be shut down so suddenly and why would a studio of this caliber need to be shut down anyway? These are things I don't know and maybe there is a good reason, but we don't know it because there have not been any other official statements or comments released by Microsoft or Ensemble yet. Halo Wars is due for release in the first half of 2009.

This isn't the first time I have reported about something like this. You may remember that I posted an article about an Xbox 360 setting fire to a house in the United States back in April of this year. Well, this isn't quite as bad but it still leaves Xbox 360 users something to think about. The Cochrane Times in the UK report that an Xbox has caused a family to evacuate their house after not being able to locate the source of a burning plastic smell. After choosing to evacuate his wife and children, homeowner Cliff Chudleigh called the fire department to come and do their thing. It seems that the source of the smoke was an Xbox 360 console inside a cabinet. Luckily there was no fire as it was only an electrical short, but it still makes me a bit nervous to think that my console might do the dance of fire when I'm not home. As always, it is a good idea to unplug all of your electronic equipment before leaving the house, especially when you are going to be gone for an extended period of time.

Bruce Everiss, the veteran games industry marketer of BruceOnGames.com has asked the question: Is the Xbox 360 reaching the limits of its capabilities? While he discuss how all consoles go through a similar development cycle, he makes an interesting point. The Xbox 360's architecture has been pretty straightforward and easy to use from the word go.... With this in mind we can only assume that developers will be able to squeeze all that the console has to offer out a lot sooner than usual and actually peak way earlier.... Bruce quotes Rod Fergusson, the senior producer for Gears of War at Epic Games from his in depth interview with website Gamasutra, where he said that " …with the two to three more years of optimization that we’ve had, we’re much further along than I think, three years ago, we thought we were going to get. So I think we’re certainly approaching the upper end of it, as far as what developers are able to do with it, but just looking at all the demos we saw today — ours and others — it’s clear that all the games just keep improving, and keep pushing that bar.” There is no doubt that the Gears of War games look absolutely stunning but it begs the question of whether or not we will see anything better ever released on the Xbox 360. While there are a lot of elements, such as artwork, that work towards the final presentation of a game we still have to wonder if we are already reaching the pinnacle of the 360's graphic abilities. The PS3 left developers struggling to squeeze all the power out of the Sony console at first but as time is going by they are most definitely starting to deliver mind-boggling visuals.... Spend nothing more than 5 minutes with Metal Gear Solid 4 and you will be blown away. This makes you wonder how much more is still possible as developers learn new and interesting ways to utilise the PS3's cell processors. Both HD consoles still have quite a long life ahead of them and it's going to be quite interesting to see if the 360 is capable of more than its current offerings and whether or not the PS3 is going to still forge ahead. Bruce states that "Just like previous generations the absolute limit of capabilities is never reached, these systems are very complex and there is only so much time that can be put into wringing that last ounce of capability out of them. However it must be true that now the developers are nearly getting the most out of the 360 and that further improvements will be slower to come.... If he is right then it will mean that the Xbox 360 will probably improve as time goes by, although the development will be a lot slower and less dramatic as what we have seen over the past two years.

Normally when a game breaks the million barrier you can pretty much bet the house that you are going to see a sequel to it. However this time it may not be that simple. Yes Ninja Gaiden 2 has just sliced through the millionth customer worldwide but with their fearless leader, Itagaki, now in court with Tecmo things are not …

With the release of the very heavily anticipated release of Gears of War 2 drawing nearer and nearer a lot of buzz is going to start going around really soon. To help kickstart some of the buzz, some new screens of GOW2 have been released on the net for us all to drool over and they are looking might fine. It still never ceases to amaze me how the screenshots looks so much smoother than what the actual game looks like when its playing on a screen in front of you. Either way, its looking as good as we have all been led to believe. Check the screens out after the jump.