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Strategy games don’t work on console, the general manager of Championship Manager developer Beautiful Game Studios has said.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com, Roy Meredith said he believes that console owners “don’t want a game you’ve got to think about too much”, and said football management sim Championship Manager wasn’t “exciting enough” to warrant a console release.
He said: “I’d love to release a console version that would work but this is not the game. Strategy games don’t work on console and this is a strategy game. The experience I’ve had on that, I think EA had that Lord of the Rings strategy game, I don’t like Lord of the Rings as a franchise but the game itself on PC was immense. I thought it was brilliant. They released it on Xbox 360 and it stiffed. I don’t think people want a game you’ve got to think about too much on a console. They canned Command & Conquer on PS3, EA I think spent 5 million on it and just said no thanks, which I think is the right decision.”
The strategy genre has traditionally been one developers have struggled to make work on consoles, with issues surrounding finding adequate controls chief among the stumbling blocks. Recent iterations of rival football management sim Football Manager, from Sports Interactive, have been ported to the Xbox 360 with little success. Indeed Sports Interactive didn’t release a console version of Football Manager 2009, released late last year.
Meredith said that while a console version of Champ Man would be “wonderful”, he currently doesn’t have a solution.
“It’s really difficult to get this to work,” he said. “I’m not saying no, but at the moment I haven’t got a solution for it on console. People want reactive, fast action things on console. This is a statistical game, it’s a strategy game, it’s a game you have got to put a lot of thought into as a football fan, as a football manager. At the moment it’s not exciting enough to be warranted as a console release in terms of dynamic action. If we can get to it, it would be wonderful, but I haven’t got the solution at the moment.”
Check out our first-look preview of Championship Manager 09, due out for PC in April, right here.
Do you agree with Roy’s comments about console games? Let us know in the comments section below.
