Age of Empires - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

The Age of Empires series has been a commercial success. As of 2008, five of its games have each sold more than one million copies. According to Gamasutra, Age of Empires had sold more than three million copies, and The Rise of Rome sold one million copies as of 2000. Around the same time, Microsoft announced that they shipped over two million copies of The Age of Kings. In 2003, Microsoft announced the sales of one million copies for Age of Mythology. By 2004—prior to the release of Age of Empires III—the Age of Empires franchise had sold over 15 million copies. On May 18, 2007, Ensemble Studios announced that two million copies of Age of Empires III had been sold. Games in the series have consistently scored highly on video game review aggregator websites Game Rankings and Metacritic, which collect data from numerous review websites. As noted in the table to the right, the highest rating game is Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, receiving a 92% score from both sites.

Critics have credited Age of Empires for influencing real-time strategy (RTS) games such as Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, and Cossacks. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds was also influenced by the series: it utilized the Genie game engine, as Age of Empires and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings had, and was considered by critics to be a very close replica to the games; IGN began their review with the statement "I love Age of Star Wars, I mean Star Empires. Whatever it's called, I dig it." and GameSpot wrote that "fundamentals of the Age of Empires II engine are so intact in Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds that veterans of that game can jump right in." In October 2005, Shelley commented on the impact of the series. In a GameSpy interview, he explained that parents would "tell Ensemble Studios that their kid is reading books about ancient Greece because they enjoy playing with the triremes so much, or that they want to check out books about medieval history because game taught them what a trebuchet was."

Shelley has said the key to the success of the games was its innovation, rather than imitation of its peers. He also claimed the unique elements in the games "helped establish the reputation of Ensemble Studios as masters of the real-time strategy genre." Mark Bozon of IGN wrote in his review of The Age of Kings, "The Age of Empires series has been one of the most innovative real-time strategy games for PC in the last decade or so." Gamenikki called Ensemble Studios "the developer that started it all" when they talked about how much Age of Empires III had done to advance the real-time strategy genre. Shelley has acknowledged the success and innovation of Age of Empires helped to ensure Ensemble survive its early periods since startup. In 2005, Shelley complained of critics holding an "innovation bias" against the series; citing the 60% score from Computer Gaming World, he said that despite Age of Empires III being "perhaps the best selling PC game in the world," reviewers expected "something really new," and rated it harshly.

Bungie Studios chose Ensemble Studios to develop Halo Wars, an RTS game based on their Halo series. They said one of the reasons they chose to work with Ensemble was because of the "awesometastic" Age of Empires series. They also noted that Ensemble was the perfect choice "to realize the original vision of Halo," which started life as an RTS.