GC 2007: Total War won’t be marching to consoles

Though Creative Assembly, the developer behind the Total War series, believes that there’s no doubt developers could create a great real-time strategy game on consoles, the devs were sure that the recently announced Empire: Total War won’t be coming to any console in the near future. “It would be very, very difficult to make anything close to Total War on consoles,” Mike Simpson, studio director, told CVG in an interview.

“You’d have to change too much about it to make it work,” he continued. Apparently, the likes of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, and Battle for Middle Earth have all been ported to consoles, but were reflected by PC strategists as plain ports tweaked for gamepads. None were especially noteworthy in the blockbuster department.

Simpson also held this sentiment:

There were a few RTS games developers ported to consoles – and they did it really badly. … Then pretty much the whole market said ‘whoa – you can’t do RTS games on consoles’. But it’s because they were ports – bad ports.

Although the industry hasn’t created a great console RTS, there’s still hope that it might. Simpson said that all developers need to do is to plan an RTS from the ground up as a purely console game.

Though Creative Assembly, the developer behind the Total War series, believes that there’s no doubt developers could create a great real-time strategy game on consoles, the devs were sure that the recently announced Empire: Total War won’t be coming to any console in the near future. “It would be very, very difficult to make anything close to Total War on consoles,” Mike Simpson, studio director, told CVG in an interview.

“You’d have to change too much about it to make it work,” he continued. Apparently, the likes of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, and Battle for Middle Earth have all been ported to consoles, but were reflected by PC strategists as plain ports tweaked for gamepads. None were especially noteworthy in the blockbuster department.

Simpson also held this sentiment:

There were a few RTS games developers ported to consoles – and they did it really badly. … Then pretty much the whole market said ‘whoa – you can’t do RTS games on consoles’. But it’s because they were ports – bad ports.

Although the industry hasn’t created a great console RTS, there’s still hope that it might. Simpson said that all developers need to do is to plan an RTS from the ground up as a purely console game.