Gaming Market Trends

As most people know and do these days when u find something good on the market you go ahead and flog it for all its worth

In the gaming market the latest trend to be flogged or rather the latest trend that is in the process of being flogged is strategy games genre. In the past strategy games were reserved solely for the PC market and rightly so as well.

When you look at it the PC is generally ideal for a strategy game since it allows a gamer a lot higher reaction times, this has all changed quite drastically with the release of the Xbox-360 and its first strategy game Lord Of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth 2.While this is nothing new as such (Red Alert was originally released for the Playstation as well) ,this was the first title that showed the gaming market that there is a lot of potential for strategy games on a console and now thanks to this the market has woken up and more and more strategy games are being released for the Xbox-360.

The key difference in development of Battle for Middle Earth 2 for the console was its complete redesign of the way that a strategy game play on a console. The control scheme does not try to imitate a mouse with its quick reactions, just imagine trying to select a squad of units with a joystick , not only would it take forever but it would also frustrate the player to the point of the game never being played again. To get around this problem the cursor is fixed in the center of the screen and unit select is executed via shortcuts. These shortcuts can be made up of a number of keys or just a single key with different contexts.

So what this translates to is that the game play speed for the general gamer (plays less than 10 hours a week ) is not noticeable. Also for the general gamer sitting back relaxed while playing a game is more comfortable then sitting in front of a PC.

Though a lot of people are trying to get a piece of the pie when it comes to strategy game on the console , non of the developers are really willing to take risk and do a console only release. While this does make sense for the developer since they can get the money back and still make a name for theme selves , it does not always make the more avid gamer want to buy the game on the console when they can get the same if not better experience on the PC. To lure people away from getting the game on the PC developers have made the graphics the same or very similar on all version of the game. This should change in the near future with the release of the much awaited Halo Wars which will be a console exclusive. Whether this drives some of the strategy gamers from PC to Xbox-360 is yet to be seen.

To date there are 5 strategy games released for the 360 with Halo Wars and War hammer Battle March on its way things are looking good.Also released recently is the popular turn based strategy game civilizations. Now if only i could get the time to finish the ones i have the sooner i can get started and hyped up for all the other new releases.

As always any comments welcome.

~stalkerh