As mentioned last week, and included in our “Out Now" post yesterday, Sega has officially launched Total War Battles: Kingdom (Free) following a lengthy Canadian soft launch. We’ve had a thread rolling in our forums for a while now, and the response the game has gotten has been… Interesting. Sega has launched the game across multiple platforms, but I’m not just talking iOS and Android, Total War Battles: Kingdom is also available on Steam.
What we’ve seen so far is pretty much identical to what happened with Crashlands ($6.99) in that mobile gamers really dig getting a Total War game, managing their kingdom, and doing all the other strategic stuff that goes into participating in a game like this. In a way it feels a lot like SimCity BuildIt (Free) in that it definitely seems like a game that belongs in the Total War family, but all the super-complicated stuff has been stripped out to make it easier to play for a few minutes at a time while you’re on the go.
Unsurprisingly, in the Steam side of things, PC gamers straight up aren’t having any of this. The game has been railroaded with negative reviews, with all the ones marked as “helpful" blasting the game as “pay to win," a “disgrace to the franchise" and all sorts of other things along those lines. As someone who enjoys all types of gaming, I’m super fascinated to see how all this pans out.
We’re at a point where mobile devices are getting powerful enough and the development tools studios are using can build the same game then with minimal effort publish it to practically every platform, including PC and mobile. If you’re building a game, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to not release it everywhere you can. At the same time, developers aren’t deaf to player feedback. It feels like the future of game development lies somewhere in the middle where developers eventually figure out how to make compelling mobile experiences that also make for fun PC games without the avalanche of negative reviews along the lines of how, and I quote, “now we have phoneplebs ruining games."
We’ve got exciting times ahead of us as the lines between platforms continue to blur.
