I definitely do not think rereleases of old games are that spectacular in terms of support. Especially considering MS killed all those studios that made those games in the first place (whether in spirit or legitimately wasted them GTA style).
When I think of support, I think of like... releasing new games. Or... not letting DX11 fester for 5 years.
Sorry if I'm unimpressed by HD re-releases of great old games after they disbanded the companies who created them.
Ensemble is one company. Lionhead's still around and making games. BigHuge games died because of 38 Studios; Epic resurrected them for about five minutes before shuttering them.
Don't get me wrong: it's not huge. But it bugs me that people fail to acknowledge that MS made this move, that it was a move people were begging for for years, and, oh, right, that last I checked, Age of Empires II HD is still the single most played RTS on Steam.
I see all these people going "MICROSOFT SO DUMB WHY HAVEN'T THEY PUT HALO ON PC," but they're outright ignoring that Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, and Rise of Nations aren't just on Steam, they're fully integrated with Steamworks functionality, their multiplayer works, and so on and so forth. And, again, Age of Empires II is even getting expansions.
Like, really, is Halo the only thing that's supposed to make us happy at this stage?
I mean... you know me. I love Halo. I write about Halo for Kotaku. I want to play Halo on the PC so much that I sat there while I was editing gifs for my latest article and found my hands drifting to WSAD even though it was freaking video footage. I love Halo.
I just also feel like Age of Empires 2 is equally a huge deal is all, y'know?
Again, don't get me wrong: I'd love to see Microsoft going "hey. Here is a big, huge PC game. It takes advantage of PC stuff. There's no cross-platform play. This is a proper Age of Empires. Also we're announcing five more exclusive, major, non-F2P PC games." I want that
hard. But... I mean... Age of Empires 2 means a whole lot to me, Microsoft has done a great job, and it feels like nobody cares.