'Halo Wars is for Germans' - Microsoft exec News

DON'T MENTION THE WAR

Not interested, but thanks for the effort.

"It illustrates our desire to release games that are appropriate for gamers in all markets."

Is that a bit like how Shania Twain releases different versions of her amazing albums for different regions?

I hope, as a Britisher, that they ONLY release football and driving games here. Or Sim Ale.

Wave after wave of luftwaffer, sorry Spartens.

@ Laserbeam

+1 ;)

Not that interested in it on the XBox360. Would be quite interested in it for PC.

MS excutive: "Hmmm, we need to make a game for the Germans...Lets think about this for a moment. What was thier main contributution to modern history and how can we tie Halo into that?"

Next up, Sim Covenant POW Camp!

So is Halo Wars being made for the PC or the Xbox 360?

The Germans love their RTS's on the PC I thought.

It's 360 exclusive, so expect a PC version 4 years from now when nobody cares anymore to launch Vista 2.

He could be right, asfar as Northern Europe goes. The "German" headline was either pretty stupid by EG (or maybe very Brittish), or a half assed try on getting some traffic here. EG migh get posting on the X06 previews instead

'Halo Wars is for Germans'

MS is racists!

The title just writes itself.

X 07 is apparently held at Nuremberg, so they might have a shot at it.

Well then, German Eurogamers, are they right?

Really? With the dull Americanising closing line by the spartan I thought that they wanted to please them yanks. :\

"If they want war, we'll give them war" (or something similar dull and macho) will really go down well with us Europeans. Yep, I can see the main headlines already.

Jawohl! Halo Wars for ze Germans. Dankeschön, Microsoft!
No seriously, if they want me (yes, I'm German...) to buy a 360 they better stop censoring Live for the people who were dumb/honest enough to create a German profile instead of an Austrian one. No Dead Rising demo, no Live-Arcade Doom, no SmashTV, no UltimateMK3 and to top it all...a censored version of Gears of War! Guess I'll stick to my PC...

I think you should thank you German censors

re: Skeletor and german censors... I imagine Microsoft are constrained by local laws. If you want those laws to change you need to start persuading your politicians to change them.

F'n politicians... who put them in charge?

@Fairlane
I don't think so, the stuff is "indexed" which means it's adults only, it's NOT banned.
They could easily make it available to the customers paying for Live with creditcard (creditcard=adult customer, no problem)! Hopefully this will change when Sony enters the arena...

Skeletor - Or alternatively just create a second profile?? There's a fair few people on the forum who have done just that with a Jap profile.

@Tabasco
Yeah, that's probably the only way to solve this problem right now. Thanks for the hint.

I'm german too. But why is this game for us? IMHO RTS is very popular in all europe/US. If there is a cliché-german genre, it would be build-up-tons-of-money strategy titles like Port Royal, Settlers or 1503 A.D.

But hey! Maybe Humans and Covenants settle their conflicts with penalty shots! Then it would at least be more german than british. :-)

/me is running for cover

Btw, I'm seriously surprised that there are none of the good ol AMIGA classics on LIVE yet. Would love to see Turrican or Xenon2 rocking on LIVE!

Yeh, all this time they keep porting shitty japanese games while the real classics from the pc, c64, speccy, etc. are left alone. :\

@ Xerx3s:

You're right. In Europe, we only buy posh, sophisticated games, and not the inane drivel them yanks seem to fancy. Yessir! :D

@rdexter
Most stupid headline ever? Why? I personnaly don't think so...sure it's provocative but I seriously don't see anything bad or stupid about it. To be honest, I like the fact that MS thinks about the German gamers and their taste in gaming. I don't necessarily have this impression when it comes to Nintendo or Sony who seem to see Europe as some kind of second class market that is served when the homemarket and the Americans are satisfied. MS today is a little bit like Sega in the 90s. It just doesn't take them ages to bring an important title to Europe - I like that, even if it is accompanied by cliches from time to time.

Once again, the Halo factor. What, might I ask, makes Halo so worthy of notice above any other deeply average sci-fi shooter? The biggest innovations I can detect from Halo were a seperate grenade button and some quite big maps. Just what do people see in Halo?

The universe.

I'm fond of it because I once asked Iain Banks if he was aware of the startling similarities between elements of his novels and the Halo franchise and he said that he was cool with it.

I'm a Cortana/Guilty Spark fan mostly.

itamae: It's made for Lou, not for you (and me)... ;)

"But hey! Maybe Humans and Covenants settle their conflicts with penalty shots! Then it would at least be more german than british. :-)

/me is running for cover"

Hehe, wonderful one mano.

Those Germans sure do love their RTS games.

I can kind of see what MS is trying to do: the 360 has done well in America, it's in a totally hopeless position in Japan, but in Europe it's somewhere in-between.

Their best chance of boosting the 360's fortunes is in Europe, and Europe is a larger market than Japan, so they're now making games that appeal to us.

Even if MS totally write off Japan, America and Europe are still big enough to put them ahead of their rivals.

[maven]: Yes, that's what I was thinking. But wouldn't he rather play that something something Heroes game rather than this RTS for teh kiddoz thing? :-)

For you, ze Halo Var iss ofer!

"It's for the Germans," the exec confided.

Confided as in... a secret? :P

Did that LOR game for 360 sell a bit? I'd say RTS and consoles in general is a bad combination (unless there's a mouse/keyboard control option available). On a side note, never understood the S in RTS. This kind of game is more of an exercise in agility than in strategy (or maybe that's just my poor command of the genre). Turn-based, like Advance wars and FFT, is way better suited to the console.

Zere shouldn't be any games for zouse germanz, ze only gratitude zey know is invasion.

Also germans should be banned from this site, because they always write the rudest comments. (and they aren't really europeans anyway).


lol, jk

"On a side note, never understood the S in RTS. This kind of game is more of an exercise in agility than in strategy (or maybe that's just my poor command of the genre). Turn-based, like Advance wars and FFT, is way better suited to the console."

Yes, RTS always seemed more like a new spin on the Lemmings formula than a simulation of a conflict. There's nothing wrong with that, but it lends itself more to instinct than thought.

And yes, RTS without a mouse or touchscreen (or indeed the Wii controller) doesn't seem that wise.

On a side note, never understood the S in RTS. This kind of game is more of an exercise in agility than in strategy (or maybe that's just my poor command of the genre).

Undoubtedly, "agility" plays a bigger role than it maybe should. But I suggest you take a look at a good forum for a real-time strategy game, and you'll realise pretty soon how much strategy is involved. The ideas people come up with are often nothing short of amazing, and have nothing to do whatsoever with clicking fast. It's just a common misconception from people who never seriously played them that it's all about clicking fast.

ph4ge: lol. :)

YourMessageHere: Did you even bother to consider that it might be more than that if so many ppl like it? Oh and trolling won't win you any souls.

"The ideas people come up with are often nothing short of amazing, and have nothing to do whatsoever with clicking fast"

...so in that case there's no need for it to be in real time then? :)

The reason is that it's fun, and many people love it. I love turn-based games, too, but they both have their place, and offer different gamplay (and different possibilities to apply different strategies). How would you want to make, for example, the Total War series turn-based?

Besides, the origin of battle strategies are - who would have thought it - battles. Do you think Hannibal or Napoleon fought turn-based? ;)

They should at least have a PC version in the works, it is by far, the larger RTS player base, not having that is a bad move, though, being halo, it won't have any problems selling. Which is why it pisses me off that no PC version is in the works, the 360 version will sell well enough for them. :(

"How would you want to make, for example, the Total War series turn-based?"
I love that series, but that one is real strategy IMO: turn-based when managing your territories and you get to select the troops you will use for the tactical battles.

"Besides, the origin of battle strategies are - who would have thought it - battles. Do you think Hannibal or Napoleon fought turn-based? ;)"
The planning of a real battle would probably be better resembled by a turn based game element with people taking their time to analyze the battle field, choosing and positioning the troops and analyzing strengths and weaknesses of the enemies. When the actual battle unfolds, it gets more tactical and this part is best resembled by a real-time game element. In other words, Total war is the perfect strategy game. :)

But games like Age of Empires, Command & Conquer are more the click-as-fast-as-you-can types (or rahter, learn a lot of keyboard shortcuts and learn the opening build/recruitment sequence by heart because if you make one mistake during the opening, you'll be at a serious disadvantage in the end game). But with two players of equal dexterity (and good memories) actual tactics will come into play, must admit that.

(or rahter, learn a lot of keyboard shortcuts and learn the opening build/recruitment sequence by heart because if you make one mistake during the opening, you'll be at a serious disadvantage in the end game).

Agreed, that is a problem, and while most a little more sophisticated RTS games try to circumvent it, noone has found a recipe against it, yet. Interestingly enough, Defcon manages to avoid it (but then it is a comparatively simple game anyhow, ie has no resource gathering etc.).

However, this problem isn't that different from turn-based games. Take the mother of all turn-based games, chess. A player who hasn't learned dozens of opening sequences by heart is at a serious disadvantage to the player who has, because you can't reconstruct just by thinking hundreds of different best moves (before the game opens up, so to speak).

give us a keyboard and mouse ffs. most people in the civilised world are familiar with these devices, they wont frighten people away from the console.

+ release patches for already released games to add support for these.

I guess this is why they stomped on the free RTS that halo fans were developing.

Well, they do like big wars. Although another exec told me they weren't very good at winning such games. Things never change ;0

Haha..oh. :\

give us a keyboard and mouse ffs. most people in the civilised world are familiar with these devices, they wont frighten people away from the console.

Who says that a mouse(ish thing) is out of the question? Didn't MS talk about 'new devices for the 360 that they where working on' a while back?

Personally, I really don't get why they can't just release a good rts/wireless mouse bundle.

Xerx3s: I'm not intending to "troll", I'm just totally nonplussed by Halo's popularity. I genuinely don't understand, whereas it seems everyone else does. Thought someone out there might want to share the secret of Why Halo Is Popular with me. Now I have a little more idea.

To me, it's a sci-fi FPS with a mediocre plot; of course I've considered it might be more than that, that's why I played through the first one, and as a result was highly underwhelmed. Because lots of people like something does not mean it is good, as everyone well knows.

I can only assume the universe that Disc refers to emerges more in the second game. Iain Banks is one of my favourites, but the similarities didn't seem all that striking beyond the idea of a ring-shaped world and a controlling AI entity. Culture novels are generally several orders of magnitude more complex than Halo seemed to be to me.

Yourmessagehere, ply the game online, thats where its so popular from (the second game) where as Halo CE was a game that had a great story and also great graphics for its time