It has come to my attention, and the attention of many prominent game review sites, that this generation of consoles, especially the Xbox 360, seems intent on bringing the Real Time Strategy experience to the consoles. I am primarily a console gamer, this is mostly due to the fact that my PC is utterly out of date and useless when it comes to any game that came out after Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.
This brings me to my big question for developers: Why not develop a keyboard and mouse attachment for the Xbox 360 that is usable for the RTS games that they seem intent on developing? Now, I am not one to go around yelling at console gamers about the superiority of keyboard and mouse controls for First Person Shooters, but it would be difficult for me to deny the superiority of a keyboard and mouse set up for Real Time Strategy games.
Now I know the most common argument against a keyboard and mouse peripheral for console RTS games is that it would give an unfair advantage to players who did not have the money to buy a keyboard and mouse for the game. It's a valid concern, but not one that does not have easy solutions. My proposal is to include options and settings for online match making that allow game hosts to choose whether or not to allow players who have USB keyboards and mouses attached to their 360's. Of course, a host couldnot select to allow only players who are playing with a controler if the host was using a mouse himself, and any attempt to plug in the peripherals once the game had already started would simply boot the player and result in a loss for his or her (lol girls play games?) record. PROBLEM SOLVED!
I desperately would love to see RTS games come to prominence on the console scene, but i just don't see it happening until one developer grows some balls and throws in mouse and keyboard peripherals with their game.
User Comments
Actualy they are taking a step ahead, instead of any controllers the game Tom Clancys End War will be all playable in voice command. Of course you will still have the option of using controlls.
Yeah I know about the end war control scheme...to me it just seems like they're doing a whole lot of extra work to put in a voice command system that works, rather than just doing the more sensible thing and putting in a keyboard and mouse option...the USB ports on the 360 are right there, it's not like they would have to do anything really clever with attachments.
Well, if you can get people to fork over $80 for Guitar Hero 3 bundled with the controller.....
Although I'm thinking that a console RTS should probably use a specialized controller. A kind of multifunction touch screen? I know that it doesn't work too well for RTS games on the DS, but there's been a three years since that was released.
I agree that some kind of dedicated pointing device is needed, but I also think that you need something more intuitive than a keyboard for all the functions of an RTS. Even Age of Empires 2 didn't use all the buttons on the keyboard and it had something like 60 hotkeys. A custom touchpad, with overlay, could cover everything you needed to do and provide a pointing device on par with a mouse.
But again, the game would have to be sold with the controller. Just like Dance Dance Revolution, Donkey Konga and Guitar Hero.
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