It's not a hot take, it's fine to dislike popular games for personal reasons. You're not calling it a horrible game, it just didn't click for you.

AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.

AoE2 genuinely had a small competitive scene on Voobly and Gameranger. It was being played as a grassroots esport by dedicated fans even before the HD and DE remasters.

One of the third game's glaring problems was how poorly balanced it was. IIRC the winning strategy was to play French (who already had overpowered cavalry), rush to the third age and use a particular tech to effectively blockade your opponent's home city and prevent them from playing anything in their deck.

Even when AoE3's Definitive Edition came out, fixed a lot of the balance issues and added a bunch of new civs via expansions, the damage was already done and sales were so low that Microsoft cancelled their latest expansion and halted development a few months ago.

Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, and they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.

Played the Xbox 360 demo of Halo Wars near its initial release and wasn't impressed. All I really remember about the game beyond that was how bad the box art looked. I mean those spartans look like they have fucking long giraffe necks.

Gamepad controls and real time strategy just don't mix. You either make something so mechanically slow that keyboard & mouse would shit all over that control style, or have to bastardize the game mechanics so much that it's all but fully automated. The only game I've seen remotely work as a gamepad RTS is Tooth and Tail.

Given how Microsoft handled the Conker's Bad Furday remake I think you're not far off accusing them like that here.

I assume a lot of the top level staff stick about until their contractually obliged period for getting a massive payday is over, and then look very closely at whether they actually want to be told what to do by a bunch of suits all day long.

Realistically they're working to make somebody else richer at that point, and there's only so much enthusiasm anyone can have for that. Certainly not enough for the long hours needed in the games industry.