为什么微软要放弃帝国这么多年，又重新拾起？
RT我觉得这属于微软的尿性……
打个比方，就好比Win系统的开始按钮，咱从小用到大，每一位Windows用户都认可，可微软在Win8里面去掉了，结果遭到狠喷，微软无奈只好在Win8.1里面又弄回去，自己打自己脸；
帝国时代也类似，当玩家发现自己离不开帝国时代游戏的时候，微软才想起拾起它，可以说是玩家的需求导致微软做出改变；
單純是論帝國時代這個招牌，微軟其實沒有真的出現「放棄帝國這麼多年」，以下列出歷年所有屬於此系列的遊戲作品：
1997 《世紀帝國》（PC）
1998 《世紀帝國：羅馬霸主》（PC）
1999 《世紀帝國 II：帝王世紀》（PC）
2000 《世紀帝國 II：征服者入侵》（PC）
2001 《世紀帝國 II：帝王世紀》（PS2）
2002 《神話世紀》（PC）
2003 《神話世紀：泰坦》（PC）
2004
2005 《世紀帝國 III》（PC）
2006 《世紀帝國 III：群酋爭霸》（PC）、《世紀帝國：帝王世紀》（NDS）
2007 《世紀帝國 III：亞洲王朝》（PC）
2008 《世紀帝國：神話》（NDS）
2009
2010
2011 《世紀帝國 Online》（PC）
2012
2013 《世紀帝國 II 高清版》（PC）
2014 《神話世紀擴充版》（PC）、《世紀帝國：稱霸世界》（iOS/Android/Windows Phone）
真要說是比較長的間隔，其實就是 2009 及 2010 二年，當時微軟決定解散作為帝國系列原班人馬的全效工作室，一般認為此決定受到 2007 年全球金融危機的影響，目的是要重組微軟公司遊戲業務以便減省開支，故在經濟復甦以後「重新拾起」帝國系列也是意料中事。
當然，微軟始終是商業導向的盈利機構，它不可能會真心考慮玩家的需要，無論是要放棄抑或重拾帝國，箇中首要考慮祇可能會是錢、錢以及錢。
狂叔的列表非常直观，应该已经很方便解决这个问题了，不过这几天刚好也看到有gamespot（全球最大单机游戏资讯网）的编辑Brendan Sinclair的一篇文章。在此贴一下。
原帖地址
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-04-02-killing-your-game-the-right-way
Killing your game the right way
Head of Microsoft's legacy IP studio says shutting down games-as-a-service without a plan can hurt the brand, the company, and the entire industry
Microsoft
microsoft.com
"There's not a week that goes by I don't miss City of Heroes," Microsoft's Kevin Perry told GamesIndustry International at the Game Developers Conference last month. "It felt like an untimely death of a friend, a 'taken from us so soon' sort of thing."
But the Microsoft executive producer responsible for handling the company's "legacy IP" like Age of Empires and Flight isn't (just) expressing grief over a fallen friend. He's making a point about how developers on even the most successful of titles need to plan for the day when the plug will be pulled.
While Perry said that NCsoft handled the City of Heroes shutdown just fine, he added that the increasing popularity of the games-as-a-service approach is setting developers up for a litany of headaches on legal, technical, game design, and community management fronts when it eventually comes time to pull the plug on these games. What happens when you turn the in-game store off? How will it be communicated to players when the servers go dark? What do you do for the player who just dropped $100 on in-game consumables the day before the shutdown announcement?
"Those are all questions you need to have thought out ahead of time, because you don't often get as much time to turn off as you'd like," Perry said. "Sometimes the business just isn't working, people go bankrupt, and you just have to shut things off. You could always just pull the plug on the servers, in theory, but even that will cause some significant sometimes."
Perry has had to put a good deal of thought into this issue. After all, he's been in charge of Age of Empires Online, Microsoft's free-to-play installment in the popular PC strategy series, launched in August of 2011 and set for closure on July 1 of this year. Perry believes the team has handled the shutdown in the fairest way possible. In January of 2013, they announced an end to active development on the game. Last August, they announced the shutdown date, simultaneously shutting off the in-game store and cutting off new registrations, but allowing existing players to enjoy the game for another 11 months before losing access to the game forever. In the months since, Perry says he's seen players go through the full five stages of grief.
"A lot of anger, a lot of denial. A lot of resignation and so on," Perry said. "No one's happy when that happens, of course. But we have very good community management and let the players grieve openly."
Perry's experience with Age of Empires Online also has him pushing Microsoft to make developers address the eventual closure of such games in their original greenlighting process. There's no better people to determine the best way to shut the servers down than the engineers who put it together, he said, and the odds of those engineers still being with the company and in a position to help whenever the game goes offline are awfully slim. It's an important consideration, Perry said, because a botched closure can burn all kinds of bridges.
"You can do a tremendous amount of damage to your brand, your company, and the industry at that point, because people feel they're getting burned," Perry said. "And obviously the whole free-to-play space itself is a difficult emotional aspect to a lot of the players resenting how they feel game makers are taking advantage of them already."
Beyond the immediate logistical and community relations issues, there are longer term concerns about how an industry built on games-as-a-service will preserve its history.
"When we turn Age of Empires Online off, it's gone," Perry said. "And that's a sadness to me, not just because I worked on it, but because there are people who derive significant emotional fun out of it. I'm not even talking about the money part here. It just can't be played after this. It's just going to be another one on my list of games I helped make and won't be able to play again."
In the 20 years since he's entered the industry, Perry said awareness of the need for preservation has increased significantly, even if most of the actual work on that front has been limited to museums and academics instead of the companies making this history in the first place.
"It's a hard business case to make," Perry admits. "There's not a business there. So it's the sort of thing where a museum may be the right pathway, or an educational institution might be the right pathway to do so. It's getting better, but it's not where it needs to be."
However, Perry's work with Microsoft's legacy IP points to a way for the industry to be mindful of its past while still seeking profits.
"Legacy is an interesting word because there are those who would view it as dormant, but I've done a good bit of business and made a lot of people happy with those dormant IPs in the last couple years," Perry said. "Legacy is a way of saying that they're not dormant, I think. Because there are a number of IPs we own that are dormant, that we don't have any active roles devoted to them. But there are a number of strong IPs that we do have that can bear some additional weight. And hopefully, we can do even more business with them in the future."
The Age of Empires has been one such weight-bearing IP. Beyond the free-to-play Age of Empires Online game, Microsoft also released Age of Empires II: HD Edition on Steam last year, a higher resolution version of the then-14-year-old game that featured all the bells and whistles of Valve's online game service. Towards the end of the year, the company followed that up with the release of an original expansion pack, The Forgotten. Perry sees the practice as upkeep, a modest investment in time and resources to ensure the brand stays fresh, relevant, and available.
"I view it as not forgetting our history--which is something we tend to do since we eat our young in this industry anyway--and providing a good gauge for those IP going forward," Perry said.
Because even though Perry acknowledges that new IP is the lifeblood of the industry, he believes there's plenty of value stored away in fondly remembered brands that gives them a leg up when it comes time for a reboot.
"Attention is the most important thing in the game industry today," Perry said. "It's so busy, so noisy out there. Mobile aside, even on the PC, and even on the consoles with their walled gardens, discoverability is an issue. And a good brand will open those doors for you."
文章中提到了online的关服，和HD的回炉，同时也强调了开发商或者工作室对于关闭一个游戏自然都是有人很伤心的。
"Perry sees the practice as upkeep, a modest investment in time and resources to ensure the brand stays fresh, relevant, and available.
Perry把回炉的行为视为保养，及时投入适当的资源来确保品牌价值。
"Attention is the most important thing in the game industry today," Perry said. "It's so busy, so noisy out there. Mobile aside, even on the PC, and even on the consoles with their walled gardens, discoverability is an issue. And a good brand will open those doors for you.""
如今大众的关注才是工业游戏时代最重要的，通过好的品牌将会为开发者打开一扇门。
有人也在官方论坛关于帝国4的讨论提到，对于现在的微软，这些游戏回炉是低成本赚大钱的一个好办法，对微软来说，有钱才是革命的本钱，想要一个新游戏，就必须让旧游戏来给它赚钱。很现实的问题。
帝国时代其实并不会因为回炉而丢掉品牌价值，无论是星际、帝国、红警，它们都已经在玩家心目中确立了一个很好的形象，你会发现，我们不会去怪游戏，怪这牌子，而只会吐槽那些开发者。
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