14 DAY TRIAL // Square Enix has announced that Europeans will be able to play real time strategy title Supreme Commander 2 on March 5 on the PC and on March 19 on the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft. North American players will have access to the game three days earlier on each of the two platforms.
Chris Taylor, who is the big name developer behind Supreme Commander 2, has said that the Xbox 360 version will be very much the same as that on the PC, with just a few gigantic maps taken out, because they needed more memory space than the console had to offer, and with the multiplayer limited to four versus four players.
Supreme Commander 2 is one of the first titles developed by a Western team, that at Gas Powered Games, which Square Enix is set to publish with a clear aim at wowing Western audiences. Since the game was announced last year, the development team has been pretty tight-lipped about it, only recently revealing that the narrative would be more important this time around and that they aim to create a more personal connection to the units that do battle on the huge battlefields.
Supreme Commander 2 will also have fewer units and more streamlined gameplay, eliminating some of the layers of complexity in order to allow the player more time to focus on the battles and the use of Experimental units, more now, and which can be used even in an unfinished state.
Chris Taylor is well known for creating the Total Annihilation games in the '90's and Supreme Commander was set to be a spiritual successor to that title. A lot of hardcore strategy gamers loved the first iteration in the series and Square Enix is aiming to expand the appeal with the sequel.
Those who pre-order Supreme Commander 2 will have access to five new multiplayer maps that will probably also become available to the rest of the player base a while after the official release date.