Relic Entertainment, the company behind RTS titles like Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War and Homeworld, has avoided porting any of its games to consoles because their controllers just aren’t suited for the genre.
In an interview with CVG, Mark Noseworthy, producer at Relic, said the company is interested in the idea of bringing the RTS genre to consoles but that its current stable of titles aren’t suitable, being designed to take advantage of the mouse/keyboard scheme of the PC. “Relic sees RTS on console as a very interesting proposition but so far, it hasn’t been a good fit for the games we have made,” he said. “We don’t see porting a traditional PC RTS to console as a very good strategy because the controls, by definition, are incompatible with the game design.”
Not all is lost for console owners, however; Noseworthy believes console-based RTS titles are possible, they just require a different approach to their design in order to be successful. “To do RTS on console right, you have to develop from the ground up and rethink what it means to have real-time strategy gameplay.”
He also implied that Relic’s newest title, the upcoming Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2, might be a candidate for console conversion in the future. “Dawn of War 2 isn’t a traditional RTS and I think it would make a much better candidate for porting than any of our previous games, but there are no such plans right now,” he said.
There’s still plenty of time for that to change, though. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 is currently in development and not set to launch until spring 2009, exclusively – so far – for the PC.
