This is an Xbox forum, which means the amount of people interested in real time strategy games won’t be enormous. Though, with the recent announcement of Microsofts intentions to acquire Activision-Blizzard we’re suddenly talking about the biggest RTS developer in history. The focus on this forum will obviously be on first person shooters and RPG’s, but an argument could be made that this is the genre Microsoft will have the largest marketshare in (and among the most significant IP).
Microsoft will own:
Age of Empires
Starcraft
Warcraft
Age of Mythology
Rise of Nations
Halo Wars
They also own spin-offs from the genre such as moba Heroes of the Storm and citybuilding franchises such as Caesar and Zoo Tycoon.
Other notable franchises in the genre are Command & Conquer owned by EA, Anno and The Settlers owned by Ubisoft and Company of Heroes, owned by Sega, Stronghold owned by Devolver Digital. There are also hybrids who are doing very well these days such as the Total War series, of which a new game will release on Xbox Game Pass with Total War: Warhammer III.
As a thread per franchise didn’t seem viable to me, I’d like to make this our official OT for real time strategy games.
An upcoming RTS game is Dune: Spice Wars from Funcom. These devs have previously made Northgard, an indie hit on Steam. They make interesting 4X/RTS hybrids, which lean more towards RTS. I enjoyed Northgard a lot.
I decided to finally upgrade my PC (partially) because of AoE4. While my graphics card was still fine (A GeForce 1070) the rest of my PC couldn’t handle the game on decent settings. Happy I upgraded to be honest.
My laptop has a GTX 1650 so graphically it’s still pretty decent, but it only has 8 GB ram and for some godforsaken reason AoE 4 needs quite a bit to run properly.
I’m a great fan of the genre, I played all the series above, but I have abandoned pc gaming since a few years, so I’m left with hoping MS would port these games on consoles. I still think their efforts on this end are still to slow.
Anyway, my number 1 series in the genre is Starcraft, by a huge margin.
Bring Back Starcraft pls. Not just the RTS games, but the franchise as a whole. Make it as big and prolific as the Warhammer franchise is now and much like that IP, expand into wider genres and media/transmedia. Starcraft Ghost seems to be a cancelled project a lot of people seem to be bringing up, and it looked like a dope stealth action game set in a world that was known more for its RTS appeal.
I know it doesn’t make any sense to remaster/remake Warcraft: Orc & Humans (that game is really, really old. 1994). But would be cool to get a Definitive Edition catalogue for Warcraft like we did with AoE.
I once tried to create a flowchart of all the different type of strategy games. It became a mess.
Wasteland is a turn based isometric RPG, while Gears Tactics is a turn based tactics game. Different genres with some similarities to the real time strategy genre. And more and more you see hybrid games such as Total War and the upcoming Dune: Spice Wars, which makes the distinction even more difficult.
Would be nice if Microsoft revives the Warcraft strategy games.
Literally just do a remake of 1+2.
Both games in one, graphics up to AoE4, gameplay style like Warcraft 3. Maybe Vicarious does the tech and someone else does the gameplay.
And then just do Warcraft 4 and Starcraft 3.
I get it. But we’re talking about a team that got pushed into doing something super fast and badly just for a quick cashgrab… thanks to the awful management at Blizzard and Activision.
That should change with Microsoft and VV(who have proven themselves to be great at remakes).
Also, like I said. Considering its Warcraft 1 and 2, its basically a new game just adapting the same story.
but in 4 versus 4 matches his framerate dips a lot.
Wasteland is a turn based isometric RPG, while Gears Tactics is a turn based tactics game. Different genres with some similarities to the real time strategy genre. And more and more you see hybrid games such as Total War and the upcoming Dune: Spice Wars, which makes the distinction even more difficult.