Creative Assembly: Ignoring Console Install Base Would Be 'Silly'

Author: by Staff

Though The Creative Assembly is known for its PC strategy and prides itself in driving the platform's technology, the studio's Kieran Brigden admits that "it'd be silly to ignore the business realities" and the install base of consoles. Prior to its acquisition by Sega in 2005, the UK-based studio strictly shipped PC titles, such as its popular Total War series. Following the buyout, however, Creative Assembly released a couple console-exclusive titles, Spartan: Total Warrior and Viking: Battle for Asgard, and has plans to release Stormrise later this year for both PC and consoles. "It's a big market," says Brigden, as part of a in-depth new Gamasutra interview. "It'd be silly to ignore the business realities or the fact that consoles have a very big install base. In that sense, there's a business acumen to it." But he maintains that the company didn't release its console titles out of a sense of obligation towards focusing more on consoles. "At our core and at our heart, we're a PC developer," he says. "But you've got to remember that our guys are very, very talented people and they always want to do new things." "They want to try new things and push things in certain directions. By doing something like Viking or Spartan, we actually take things in a new direction, a new phase. ... It's also a case of saying, 'We want to do what we can, we want to push the boundaries on these things too.' They just pride themselves on making good games." "If you can get that game in front of Xbox players and PS3 players, great," Brigden adds. "If you get it in front of PC players, great. Each different medium allows us to do different things and they present different challenges. I think definitely that's been behind the studio's decision to move into console development as well as doing PC stuff." While The Creative Assembly relishes in pushing its technology to further advance its massive strategy PC games, the studio would also like to carry that drive to its console work, too. "We don't just go, 'Oh, we do these cool pioneering techniques on PC,'" says Brigden. "If that's the way we approach game development, there's no reason we can't take that onto a console and try to apply that as best we can." "[Our team looks] at this stuff, they work out new ways to do it, they study the science behind it, the academic science behind it, and try and take it somewhere new. The PC offers you an opportunity to do that, and you can take those skills and apply that to console as well, which is something we're going to hopefully try to do. You can now read the full Gamasutra feature, which includes more of Creative Assembly's thoughts on the PC games industry and the upcoming release of its strategy PC title Empire: Total War (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).