It wasn’t easy for strategy games to make the shift from PC to console. The makers of Iron Harvest and Wasteland 3 explain to Tamer Asfahani how they made that jump

STRATEGY games have really always been the domain of the PC, but in the last decade or so, we’ve seen more and more of them coming to consoles. Defining what strategy games are isn’t as clear-cut as you may expect. They don’t just encompass real-time games such as Command & Conquer or turn-based games such as Civilization or Wasteland. No: strategy games can be everything, from a Tomb Raider puzzling level to games such as Hitman, or even Portal and The Escapists. Every game has an element of strategy, but it’s the real-time (RTS) and turn-based (TBS) ones we’re looking at specifically in this instance.

RTS and TBS games have traditionally focused on the PC audience, as mentioned before. This choice was primarily based on the depth and complexity of such games, and the need for multiple menus assigned to a variety of keys on the keyboard. Learning to read your User Interface and being able to quickly respond, especially in real-time strategygames, is essential, and not having to flick through complicated menus means that hot-keying items on a keyboard is easier than trying to map them to a controller.

The restrictions of consoles

That said, more and more strategy games are now becoming a staple on consoles. With consoles still representing the most accessible way of gaming, getting strategy games on consoles is very important for developers. Games such as Halo Wars and XCOM have done wonders for the genre on consoles and have highlighted the ingenuity of developers to get their games working on consoles without losing that level of detail you expect.