Why is there no competition in this genre of games?

[Goose]

do they have a monopoly on trademarks or something that make it incredibly hard for other devs?

Everyone wants a new medieval game. just not by CA.

[Grizzly]

its the same situation as with Bannerlord. A one of a kind game thats really good but stands behind TW in that case. TW is not as bad as CA but they basically have the exact same situation. nobody is able to make a game like that and not mess is up xD

[Zeek]

Probably cause it's hard af to make.

[Vlad von Carstein]

Because strategy games are the least profitable games ever, and literally no company wants to waste time and money making them

[jonoliveira12]

Cornered market.
At this point, the cost of assembling a team with all the skills, and creating a game with all the same (or better) features would be so massive, and development would take so long; only to be labeled as a Total War clone, that it is not worth it.

Imperial Glory and King Arthur tried, and failed.
It is just not worth the cost and effort, since TW fans will just stick to TW, no matter what they say.

[Mazisky]

Triple A costs, single A sales.

[Aleera]

Originally posted by Vlad von Carstein:

Because strategy games are the least profitable games ever, and literally no company wants to waste time and money making them

For a example. Starcraft 2 Wings of liberty. Massive success.
Yet, it earned LESS money then the sparkle pony mount earned on the day it released.

Let that sink in, the top 1 most played strategy title, earned less then one of the most ugly store mounts WoW had.

This is why you see so many micro-transactions and loot boxes.

[Falaris]

There is some competition in the genre, though. For instance, Age of Wonders: Planetfall also has campaign/tactical (even if turn-based) layers. X-Com and its absolute HORDE of clones also has similar dual layers, but having the tactical layer real-time is fairly unique because that REALLY is hard to get right, and expensive to make. (There's a reason the RTS genre kind of died.).

Still, Company of Heroes 3's italy story campaign works similarly and has real-time battles.

The whole concept of moving armies around on a strategy map, and then having tactical battles, is also in games like the series Heroes of Might and Magic.

Then there's the RTS/FPS hybrids - that is NOT the same genre, but at least they have similar layering, just .. one step down. Executive assault, battlezone, etc.

But none of them has anywhere near as comprehensive a strategy layer, with diplomacy, agents, research and all that, while at the same time a rich real-time strategy battle level.

I think CA has a bit of a problem - their fans are very traditional and abhor change - while at the same time, they want innovation. It's difficult to accomplish both and keep both camps happy (or the schizophrenic guys over there who want both). I suspect that resistance to change is part of why some players hate warhammer.

For my part, I think that newer strategy games with emergent storytelling at their heart has a good idea they could use, and would give more context to the sometime random feeling of the diplomacy, for instance.

One thing I absolutely has to respect from CA is that they have not pulled lootboxes, subscriptions, or similar crap on us. They could have, and their high cost low profit genre would absolutely make looking at such solutions tempting, but they haven't. (Of course, the backlash would also have been furious, and rightfully so - but still.).

[bibron]

Originally posted by Rianne:

Originally posted by Vlad von Carstein:

Because strategy games are the least profitable games ever, and literally no company wants to waste time and money making them

For a example. Starcraft 2 Wings of liberty. Massive success.
Yet, it earned LESS money then the sparkle pony mount earned on the day it released.

Let that sink in, the top 1 most played strategy title, earned less then one of the most ugly store mounts WoW had.

This is why you see so many micro-transactions and loot boxes.

Are you sure?
Wings of Liberty sold about 6 million copies according to google, and 3 millions in the first month.
I don't know how much that pony costs, but it must be really expensive to make more money than sc2?
I mean, are there even more than 3-6 million WoW players left?

[Reeva!]

Originally posted by Rianne:

Originally posted by Vlad von Carstein:

Because strategy games are the least profitable games ever, and literally no company wants to waste time and money making them

For a example. Starcraft 2 Wings of liberty. Massive success.
Yet, it earned LESS money then the sparkle pony mount earned on the day it released.

Let that sink in, the top 1 most played strategy title, earned less then one of the most ugly store mounts WoW had.

This is why you see so many micro-transactions and loot boxes.

Is there any sauce for that depressing thought? How is that even possible...

Nevermind I found it
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/today-i-learned-a-wow-mount-made-more-money-than-starcraft/1709694
Funny thought, but utter BS. Reading the replies gave me brain damage. "A dev said" devs say a lotta things...

[[FRCEOFNATR] Bullysan]

I really dont want to disturb your capitalist dreams of perfect competition (by that i mean i really like it) but competition is fake anyways. Someone or some sort or agglomeration is gonna win the game at one point and then they either release their power and reset the game or do a planned economy themselves. Since point one is probably not been taken into consideration i have to tell you that competition exists only for the lower ranks for probably at least a few decades and your living in a form of planned economy which was not not established by an evil masterplan but by reality.

To get back to topic that explains why there is no competition for RTS like this although there have been plenty of examples back in the days. I really dont want to know how many smaller development studios have simply been taken over to exactley get the competition out of the way or simply hire their developers for any software stuff. How do you want to compete with this ? You cant.

[avanidk]

Originally posted by Reeva!:

Originally posted by Rianne:

For a example. Starcraft 2 Wings of liberty. Massive success.
Yet, it earned LESS money then the sparkle pony mount earned on the day it released.

Let that sink in, the top 1 most played strategy title, earned less then one of the most ugly store mounts WoW had.

This is why you see so many micro-transactions and loot boxes.

Is there any sauce for that depressing thought? How is that even possible...

Nevermind I found it
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/today-i-learned-a-wow-mount-made-more-money-than-starcraft/1709694
Funny thought, but utter BS. Reading the replies gave me brain damage. "A dev said" devs say a lotta things...

To make this a little clearer, the mount brought more PROFIT than SC2.
While the mount sold for (I think) $15, and SC2 sold for $60, and they probably didn't sell more than four times the mounts than SC2, costs for the mount was SIGNIFICANTLY less than SC2.

[Aleera]

Originally posted by Reeva!:

Is there any sauce for that depressing thought? How is that even possible...

Nevermind I found it
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/today-i-learned-a-wow-mount-made-more-money-than-starcraft/1709694
Funny thought, but utter BS. Reading the replies gave me brain damage. "A dev said" devs say a lotta things...

Except this dev worked on Wings of liberty and is well known for working for that IP. Why would said Dev belittle his own work and falsely claim a horrible sparkle pony made more money then his hard work?

And no, as someone who was playing Wotlk. The sparkle pony launched at 25, not 15. It was the first accountwide mount that carried to all characters, new and old, while scaling to your riding level. Hence it's popularity.

The sparkle pony is a extreme example, but it's clear why companies prefer to focus on microtranscation filled crap then make a full blown game.

[Kapika96]

There is. There's a whole bunch of other strategy games competing with TW.

If you mean games exactly like TW, well strategy games are niche to begin with so there's not a lot of incentive to make one. Companies that already make them know what they're doing works, so why would they change to copy TW when they're already making money from what they do? Not to mention TW is more graphics intensive than most strategy games probably making a similar game more costly to produce. So spend more money making a game you have no experience of doing while also pissing off your fans who just want more games like your previous work?

As for those companies new to strategy games, there aren't many of them. And usually if they want to rip off an existing franchise they'd choose one more successful than TW, specifically Civ. They don't tend to sell particularly well either, so if you can't do well ripping off the most successful strategy franchise, why try and copy a smaller franchise?

[Falaris]

Originally posted by Kapika96:

There is. There's a whole bunch of other strategy games competing with TW.

In the context of 'anyone else making a total war medieval game just with another name' ?

That's what the OP asked for, not 'competition within the strategy genre'.

[Lokaror]

Niche market with an established competitor and a relatively high amount of work. You'd have to be pretty gutsy to try, let alone succeed.