I'll wrap up with a nice one. Tell me a little bit behind the process behind how Microsoft decided to bring Age of Empires back. Had it been kicking around for a long time?
I want to give Shannon Loftis a ton of credit. Shannon's been in Microsoft Studios for a long time, and is somebody I've worked with and have a ton of respect for.
There's some franchises... it's interesting, as we're investing more in our first party, and we've looking at new IP in some of our existing franchises and things that do really well, Age is just one of those things that year after year on Steam, we see it continue to sell, even though the infrastructure that's underneath the game is creaking a little bit. The community's been there supporting it.
She said, you know, this is something we should bring onto our modern platform. Make it visually more up to speed. You're obviously not going to take that game and completely make it a 4K game and everything, but make it look something closer to modern. Support some of the Live features that we have. And then let's think about where this franchise can actually go.
We own it, so maybe it seems like we're talking about ourselves a little bit, but I think it's one of the important franchises in gaming, and I think it deserves a future.
It's the 20th anniversary. So this could be the start of the renaissance? That's how you feel about it?
I do. And I think the interesting thing is the community's been out there kind of supporting this game without us. And shame on us, right?
They crashed the website today.
[Laughs] I'm really excited. They crashed our website? I actually didn't see that.
Straight off the reveal. They had it back up quickly.
Good! Good. I was involved... I started working with Ensemble on Age 3, I think was the first one I as a studio manager was working with them on. That was a studio that had some real vision in what they wanted to do with this mix of history and RTS coming together. I think it's one of those franchises that deserves a great future.