14 DAY TRIAL // The Total War series has been one of the most successful strategy series on the PC, but the development team at The Creative Assembly has stated that the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 lack the memory they need to run it properly, although plans are in place to deliver it to the next generation of devices from Sony and Microsoft.
Mike Simpson, who is the studio director at The Creative Assembly, has told Eurogamer that, “The current generation of consoles just can’t cope – they don’t have enough memory, by a large factor. Those technical reasons are probably the only reasons.
“A lot of people think that UI’s a problem, because no one’s really done it well before. I don’t think that’s a fundamental thing – I just think it’s simply that no one’s really done it very well before. A lot of the games have been ports of PC games without too much thought having gone into it.”
He added, “The way people play on console is different to the way that you play on PC. You don’t sit down for four or five hours at a time, generally. It’s much smaller play sessions, but we do have some very clever ideas in the pipeline for things we could do to make that happen.”
The Creative Assembly has some experience with current-gen consoles after the launch of Stormrise in 2009, a game that was supposed to show how strategy could be implemented using a controller and limited processing power.
The game was a flop both when it came to critics and sales, despite its attempt to introduce some innovative vertical gameplay concepts.
The Creative Assembly has recently launched the Fall of the Samurai expansion for Total War: Shogun 2 and fans of the series are now speculating on what the company might do next with its mix of turn-based strategy and tactical battles.