What is going on today? There were three, count ‘em, THREE press releases involving Firaxis today. Firaxis is Sid Meier’s company, the developers of Civilization IV (and Alpha Centauri, don’t forget a classic fave of mine! Oh, and yeah, Civ III, Pirates, etc. Lots of great strategy games). Today I popped over to Blues News to get my summary of what’s coming out and going on in the gaming realm, and there were three press releases shown.
First, an announcement of an expansion pack for Civ 4. No big surprises there. Oh, and no actual information in the press release either, here’s the Blues News post and here’s the actual press release. It’s gonna be called Civilization IV:Warlords. And that’s all she wrote.
Next, Sid Meier’s Railroads! announced. I was a big fan of the original Railroad Tycoon. I haven’t really revisited the series for any of the sequels (despite the fact that they were created by Poptop, a company also responsible for gems like Tropico and Tropico 2, great games). But now the franchise returns to its creators hands. We’ll see what they do with it.
The last announcement reads like a joke about what a marketing department would come up with for a game. CivCity: Rome Announced! ??? It’s Civilization, a great beloved game, combined with SimCity, a great beloved game. It’s gotta rock! Well. That’s what the marketing people are hoping we’ll say. Me, I’m just laughing at the idea. This one is being developed by Firefly Studios, developers of the Stronghold series (a castle building strategy game - played the demo and thought it was nifty, but not cool enough to pick up the game). I’ll see what the game actually is, but it sort of sounds like Caesar (remember the Impressions City Builders, the fourth one of which is in the works at Tilted Mill). If that’s the case, it’ll be tough competition. The city builder market is not a growing one, and it CivCity is even set in Rome, the land of Caesar. I’m sure Firefly is a quality developer, so I guess I’m curious to see what they do, and how they actually tie it to the Civ franchise (if at all).
3 Responses to “Firaxis Overload”
CivCity???? Hmmm. Don’t know what to think about that idea.
Heh, me either. I guess we’ll just have to wait for more information to come out about it.