Strategy

Games where the action is abstracted and the goal of the player is to figure out the whos, wheres, whens and hows of a conflict that will result in victory. Resource management is also frequently added.




1. Starcraft II
PC
Activision Blizzard/Blizzard
TBA 2009
There’s a good amount of wishful thinking in saying this will come out in the next twelve months, and it would be an act of extreme hubris to presume one could guess the release date of a Blizzard game. Still, Starcraft II looks like it’s a project that is closing in on completion. And whenever it does come out, it will dominate not just the genre space, but all of PC gaming. To estimate a sales number would be pointless, because Starcraft II will sell forever, like all Blizzard games before it. Millions and millions will be served.




2. Halo Wars
X360
Microsoft/Ensemble
Early 2009
Perhaps Halo Wars will make good on its promise and do for RTS what Halo did for FPS games on consoles. It might well have to; this is Halo’s first foray out of the first-person shooter genre and the first game in the series not being developed by Bungie. A success here will prove that Halo is not just a successful shooting franchise but a powerful cross-media brand, and one that doesn’t need its original creators to be fully utilized. That would vastly increase the value of an already valuable property. Halo Wars is far away enough in concept from Halo that Halo 3 players can’t be expected to buy into it as a whole—unless the game is truly exceptional, in which case this will go multi-platinum in no time.




3. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
PC/X360/PS3
EA/EA Los Angeles
October
The cheeseball alternate cold war universe of Red Alert is considered by many to be Command & Conquer at its best. Compound that with seven years of protracted franchise hiatus and Red Alert 3 certainly has a lot of fans waiting for it. For its part, the game is upping the sci-fi craziness with yet another time travel gone wrong story and a new eastern faction inspired in equal measure by history and manga. Command & Conquer, with its PC-centric design and FMV cutscenes, does look increasingly niche these days, but 500,000 might find this one.




4. Tom Clancy’s EndWar
X360/PS3/PSP/NDS
Ubisoft/Ubisoft Shanghai
Holiday 2008
EndWay could well be the disruptive product needed to get the console market fully behind real-time strategy. Then again, it could also be a gimmick, the game’s major feature being that it can be played almost entirely via voice. It’s an ingenious solution to the control problems the genre has faced on console in the past, and it if works well it could create new ways to play games period. And even if it doesn’t, the power of the Tom Clancy brand will ensure the game’s success regardless. A half million here as well, with the majority of sales on 360.




5. Empire: Total War
PC
SEGA/Creative Assemblyl
Early 2009
Long the go-to franchise for unprecedented scale in videogame battles, Empire promises to bring that scope into the naval battles of the imperial age. That era is also new territory for the franchise, which should be appealing to its history buff fan base. The scenario may not prove as popular as that of Rome, however, which was the last game in the franchise to break 500,000. Empire will get close to that, though it might be tough for the game to cross that barrier.




6. Lock’s Quest
NDS
THQ/5th Cell
September
5th Cell proved its worth when it released Drawn to Life, a rather standard platformer with an exceptionally market friendly “draw your own character” hook. Lock’s Quest doesn’t look like it has that same sort of powerful message, but it does look like the better game. The world is extremely malleable, allowing the player great flexibility when building their garrison—this should also equate to significant real-time strategy depth, especially for the format. The Drawn to Life logo is going on the box art for Lock’s Quest, but it still lacks that accessible hook that would let it touch the sales of its predecessor. Yet a couple hundred thousand wouldn’t be entirely out of the question.