If you are planning to make a multi-million dollar triple-A PC or console game that will cost $60, and you market research tells you that 70% of players prefer real-time over turn-based, you are likely to make your game real-time strategy. Because that is what you think your customers want, what will sell more copies. But if you are a medium or small game development studio and realize that you can’t compete with Starcraft II, you might go for the underserved 30% market instead. Today we live in an overcrowded market for games, there are too many games chasing too few customers, and not doing what everybody else does makes eminent sense.

An additional factor is nostalgia, with Kickstarter showing everybody very clearly how popular some old brands still are. And so there is a kind of revival of turn-based tactical games on the PC as well as on tablets. XCOM was a hit. Battle Isle is bound to make a comeback on the iPad. Ubisoft announced Might & Magic X: Legacy, a tile-based tactical role-playing game. I’ve already written a lot about Card Hunter. And now even Skulls of the Shogun, which originally weirdly was a Windows 8 exclusive, has been announced to come to any PC via Steam. So I am looking forward to playing a lot of turn-based tactical games on the PC and iPad in the future. Turn-based is back!

I used to take a handheld console (a PSP) with me during summer holidays. Easier to transport than a laptop, easier to play in a comfortable sofa chair. But when I’m planning what to take on this year’s summer holiday, the handheld console is staying home. I’ll take the iPad instead. The iPad is larger, but thinner, and the charger is much lighter, so overall it isn’t any more difficult to stow into a holiday suitcase than the PSP. I have a lot more iPad games than PSP games, as the iPad games are much cheaper. The screen is much bigger, offering more elaborate games. Touch controls are often less fiddly than console controls. And for other applications than games, like reading e-mail or surfing the web, the iPad is so much superior to the PSP that there isn’t really a contest.

So as much as I regret missing out on some games which are exclusive to handheld consoles, I don’t think I will buy any new handheld consoles any more. Neither a Nintendo 3DS, nor a PS Vita, nor anything similar. For me tablets have made those handheld consoles somewhat obsolete. And some of the games I used to play on the PSP, like Final Fantasy Tactics, have since been released on the iPad. So maybe one day I can get Fire Emblem on the iPad.

Incoming search terms for mmorpg games:

• Sword Art Online invade TalesWeaver [JP]

Unfortunately actual numbers are hard to come by. I found different numbers on used games sales, but as they are expressed in terms of money, and a used game costs less than a new game, it is hard to compare used game sales with new game sales to see what percentage of players resells their used games and would thus be bothered by a system that prevents that. It is even harder to find out what percentage of players doesn’t have internet at least once every 24 hours.

I do believe there is a large number of people whose reaction is exactly like Keen’s: They look at what games are available first, the price difference second, and the DRM issue barely or not at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if I read news around Christmas that the XBone is sold out. That is as close as I think we can get to having numbers on how bothered people really are.