Total War Dev Talks Strategy Genre, XCOM, Facebook, Consoles

Total War lead designer James Russell does not consider XCOM: Enemy Unknown as a huge rival for gamer's affections - rather it can help grow interest in the genre.

"The world of gaming is changing all the time. I think strategy gaming is changing as well," Russell said of XCOM's announcement for PC and consoles. "Look at things you wouldn't normally consider part of the strategy genre like games on Facebook - the point is you've now got 150 million people playing strategy games on PC. That just wasn't the case five years ago, so I think it opens it up and brings new potential players into the gaming space - these people wouldn't have considered themselves gamers."

Asked if the strategy genre's long game times meant competition for players' time, Russell added: "The key thing is, it's all good. We don't view other strategy games as competition in a way. Or at least I don't think it works like that. I think the more strategy games there are on more platforms the better for us. It's a really healthy thing - it gets people playing strategy games, gets people used to playing games we think are great, which are games where you've got to think and are deep and interesting."

As for whether the Total War franchise will make a long-awaited debut on consoles or other platforms, Russell added: "We’re constantly looking at what’s going on on other platforms, and thinking about the implications for us. It’s not like we’re blinkered, just doing one thing. So yeah, we’re looking at all sorts of different things.

"I’d say if we do go out to other platforms, we’d want to make sure the game was designed for those platforms rather than just being a port. At it’s heart Total War is about  being a deep, epic, immersive strategy game experience – the PC is the ultimate machine for that. So we’d always remain at heart a PC franchise."

Shogun 2's stand-alone expansion Fall of the Samurai hits PC on 23 March - look out for our preview and the full interview with Creative Assembly soon on NowGamer.