

One million units were sold worldwide in just four months.īut Age of Empires III needed to stretch further from the series' gameplay roots.
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Its flirtations with 3D graphics were enough to keep it looking modern, and both its gameplay additions-notably, hero and mythological creature units plus god/culture-specific abilities-and its fully orchestrated dynamic soundtrack-finally Stephen Rippy could get away from MIDI-were critically acclaimed. Age of Mythology managed to keep that old dance going a little longer. If it hadn't been a hit, Moulder theorizes, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer might have never signed off on the billions of dollars in losses that it takes to enter the console space when Ed Fries-who at the time was vice president of game publishing at Microsoft-pitched the idea in 1998. "Then on the other side," he continued, "we had to show that we have the ability as a first-party publisher to deliver a hit game aimed at core gamers-because that's people who buy and play console games."Īge of Empires was the game that fulfilled that second criteria.

"One success was the success of DirectX, which showed that we had the chops on the operating system side to deliver technology that made it possible to build great games-and that's what DirectX was." "I believe that there were two big successes that had to happen to Microsoft for the Xbox console to happen," said Moulder. Age's other legacy Age of Empires' greatest legacy may not have anything to do with its continued popularity.
