Having noted that a PC version of EndWar is likely, creative director Michael de Plater has now stated why they won’t be releasing the PC version of the game until after the console versions are out: PIRACY.

"To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two," he said. "The level of piracy that you get with the PC just cannibalizes the others, because people just steal that version.”

“Piracy’s basically killing PC,” Plater plainly stated.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 editions of EndWar are scheduled for release November 7.

Up until now Tom Clancy’s EndWar, the upcoming voice-controlled real-time strategy game, was only known to be in development for PS3 and Xbox 360. However, PC gamers can now take a load off their chest as Videogaming247 reports on the distinct possibility that a PC version of the game might be in development.

The site spoke to EndWar creative director Michael de Plater at a London event. He talked about his experience on PC RTS games at Creative Assembly, noting that EndWar is “in many ways, gameplay-wise, it’s a modern warfare, Tom Clancy version of Total War.”

When asked specifically about the possibility of a PC version: "Yeah, there’s no reason not to."

There you have it! The game is due out on PS3 and Xbox 360 early next month.

Pirate strategy game Age of Booty has gone gold and will arrive as a digital download on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network on October 15 and 16, respectively, costing 800 Microsoft points ($10).

Created by Certain Affinity, the game is a hex-based strategy title formerly known as Plunder, which was, in turn, inspired by a Bungie joke about a “Pimps at Sea” game.

A PC version will also be released on digital distribution sites such as Steam for a $10 price tag. Demos for all platforms are expected to arrive soon.

Eurogamer reports that Tom Clancy’s EndWar will be released on November 7 on PS3 and Xbox 360. The game was previously expected in October.

Clearly revolutionizing the real-time strategy genre, the game will have you using voice to command your units. This ranges from simple orders to complex orders like reforming and creating a group. On Eurogamer are some nice examples, and opinion that it works great.

We will find out for ourselves if the game is any good less than two months from now.

Fearing the backlash of angry gamers over the closure of Ensemble Studios, the creator of the Age of Empires strategy franchise and the upcoming Halo Wars game, Microsoft has emphasized its commitment to PC gaming, adding that the Age of Empires franchise won’t be lost.

Shane Kim, Microsoft VP of interactive entertainment, assured gamers that the company still owns the rights to the franchise and that they are “super excited for the potential of the franchise.”

Kim also talked about the new company that will be created from the ashes of Ensemble. It will supposedly be independent and be founded by the heads of Ensemble, with Kim adding that Microsoft will “have an ongoing relationship with that new company.”

On Massgate.net is word that “Arizona” and “Valley” are two maps being primed for release for World in Conflict. These are the two maps that won the recent official map contest.

No release date was given, though it was mentioned that they will be playable soon on the game’s official servers. The two map-makers – Slepnryl and Gozeus – apparently impressed the developers with a well-balance Tug of War map and using “stunning” DX10 effects for their maps.

Gas Powered Games sent word that the beta testing of Demigod is now underway for those who pre-ordered the action-strategy-role-playing game. Publisher Stardock noted that it will continue to provide limited access to the beta through pre-order signups.

Demigod is expected to be released early next year.

EA and other publishers have been lambasted for including “draconian” DRM in their games. However, the company seems to have learned from its mistakes, as Chris Corry, producer of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, revealed that the copy protection in the game will be “more lenient” than other titles.

“In the case of Red Alert 3 (and all PC titles coming out of EA), we will use SecuROM,” said Corry, referring to a brand of DRM technology used in previous EA LA projects. He notes that the game disc will not be required to launch the game; up to five installations will be allowed after which users will have to contact EA customer service.

He also took some time to offer his opinion on the DRM issue.

“I think it would be a shame if people decided to not play a great game simply because it came with DRM, but I understand that this is a very personal decision for many of you and I respect that,” adding, “I’m a lot less respectful of those people who take the position that they will illegally download a game simply because it has DRM.”

Red Alert 3 is set for release on PC and Xbox 360 next month.

While developer Blizzard has remained tight lipped about the release of StarCraft 2, publisher Activision Blizzard has stated that the game “should” arrive in 2009.

“Next year’s offerings from Activision Blizzard should include highly anticipated PC strategy title StarCraft II, the sequel to one of the world’s most enduringly popular games,” claimed Activision Asia Pacific publishing VP Phillip Early at the Activate Asia Pacific.

Blizzard is known for releasing its games only when they are highly polished and done. The studio is currently working on finishing the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for WoW, a third Diablo game, and an unannounced MMO.

To celebrate the 13th anniversary of the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert this Sunday, August 31, publisher EA will give away the game for free. The company did not disclose how long the game would remain free, but noted that it will be available all day on the 31st.

The free download will be posted on the Red Alert 3 website as a promotion for the upcoming sequel which will hit PC and Xbox 360 in October. Those who pre-order the game will also get a free download of Red Alert 2.

While StarCraft 2 will feature three races like its predecessor, Blizzard has suggested that a fourth race may appear as part of an expansion pack.

“We don’t have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of StarCraft II, but I’m sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set it’s a feature that’ll come up for discussion,” said Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce.

Pearce explained that the team has originally considered adding a fourth race to the game, but chose to focus on the “cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races.”

StarCraft 2 is expected to be released sometime next year.

Ubisoft today announced that it will launch a VIP demo of Tom Clancy’s EndWar for the Xbox 360 before the game’s retail release.

“We believe EndWar will revolutionize the strategy genre on consoles and are thrilled gamers will be able to get a little taste of why we are so excited about EndWar’s release this holiday season,” said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft. “With its innovative voice command and intuitive game design, fans will be able to learn first hand how a console game was able to win the judges over and win Best Strategy Game of E3 for the first time in a category previously dominated by PC titles.”

The demo will offer multiplayer functionality and serve as a stress test for the online systems of the massive war game. It will also allow players to try the game’s voice command enabled strategy prior to its release.

There will only be a limited number of slots, with pre-order customers getting first preference. It will launch in early October, with the final game being released on PS3, Xbox 360, PSP and DS this Fall.

While PCs are the undoubted kings of RTS games, handhelds have stolen the crown as top-dog of turn-based-strategy titles. Both the PSP and the DS have their fair share of titles both excellent and abysmal. Developers Strategy First and Cypron Studios are in the process of taking advantage of this popular trend to bring back a classic from the strategy world. For those unfamiliar with the series it was a tactical turn based game where players recruited and outfitted a team of mercenaries for various missions.

It was loved for its attention to detail as much as its humor and quality gameplay: when assembling a team of mercenaries you had to take into account their feelings towards each other. Some of the soldiers wouldn’t get a long and could cause problems on a mission. Get too many of your mercs killed and you’ll get a reputation as a careless employer and find your pool of applicants limited to the dangerously unbalanced. This classic title will be re-released on the DS in 2009.

Processor and GPU maker AMD announced today a list of future games that all feature support for DirectX 10.1, an updated version of DX10 found in Windows Vista. The games are BattleForge, Stormrise and Cloud 9.

The latest from Creative Assembly, Stormrise has been said to be “built from the ground up specifically for high-def consoles”. It will reportedly feature controls that will “revolutionize the way RTS games are played.”

BattleForge is a RTS-CCG hybrid in the works at EA Phenomic, with Cloud 9 in the works at NHN.

AMD noted that only its ATI Radeon HD 3000 and HD 4800 cards currently support the DirectX 10.1 technology, which, surprisingly, is yet to be adopted by NVIDIA.

Developer Introversion sends word that they accepting pre-orders for Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest, the upcoming multiplayer spin-off of Darwinia that promises gamers the “ultimate retro-arcade multiplayer experience.”

The game is set for release on September 19, and those who pre-order will be able to play on that day exactly, as their game key will be sent early through the mail.

There are three schemes for pre-ordering: digital download, digital download plus box, and a limited edition special pack that comes in a custom-made Darwinian tin. The logo-embossed tins will contains DVDs of both Multiwinia and Darwinia, a coffee-book table featuring artwork from both games, a complete postcard set of Multiwinia cartoons and Darwinia foam toys.

Darwinia was awesome. Can’t wait to see how Multiwinia turns out!

Ever since the start of the Halo franchise fans have been awed by the sleek lines of the Pelican, the brute force of the Scorpion tank, the confusing nomenclature of the Warthog and the true ‘army-of-one’ potential of Spartan soldiers. When it comes to impressive military hardware that leaves gamers twitching to send waves of them hurtling towards a foe, hardpoints bristling with explosive destruction, the tech of the Halo Series is right up there in the top five. Today the box shot for Bungie’s upcoming Halo Wars RTS is available. It of course features a trio of Mjolnir armor clad cybernetic soldiers in the style of the iconic Master Chief with tanks, jets and jeeps all in tow. Click here to check out the full-size picture.

Unfortunately there’s no release date specified yet. RTS fans will have to wait for further details of when they’ll be able to order the various human forces in glorious battle against the evil alien forces of the covenant.

Following the tradition set by earlier Command & Conquer titles, Red Alert 3, the upcoming action-strategy entry in the series, has gotten itself a real-life cast who will act in hammed up motion sequences.

The cast includes the likes of Jenny McCarthy, Tim Curry, Kelly Hu, Jonathan Pryce, JK Simmons, Peter Stormare, George Takei and Randy Couture.

Red Alert 3 is currently in beta and is scheduled to ship this Fall.

Online retailer Amazon has posted listings for a new Company of Heroes expansion titled “Tales of Valor”, prompting speculation that an add-on for the WW2 real-time strategy series is on its way.

The add-on is priced at $29.99, identical to the cost of the previous standalone expansion “Opposing Fronts”. The listing also lists a tentative release date for the game: March 1, 2009.

No other details on the title were offered. THQ is yet to officially comment on the matter.

Paradox Interactive has announced Elven Legacy, a fantasy-themed turn-based standalone expansion for Fantasy Wars.

Set for release early next year, the expansion will offer a nonlinear storyline, two primary campaigns – elf and human – and a mission editor to let you create your own missions and campaigns, as well as various multiplayer modes.

“This is one of the best-looking TBS games I’ve seen in a long time, and it follows in the same spirit of games like Heroes of Might and Magic, Master of Magic, and Warlords Battlecry”, said Paradox Interactive Executive Vice President Fredrik Wester. “The developers have really taken care to provide extensive depth and content, which could make this game one of those that stays on gamers hard drives for a long time.”

Europeans are lucky this time around as regional retailer GAME has revealed that those who purchase the special edition of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 from the store will get beta access to a “future C&C game”.

The higher priced premier edition of the game comes in a metal box and includes five exclusive skirmish maps, a making-of DVD and the aforementioned beta access. Both the standard and the premier editions will include a Red Alert 3-themed item for Warhammer Online.

Red Alert 3 is due for release on PC and Xbox 360 this October. It is not known if the beta access offer will be extended to North America or not.

With the roaring success of the original scifi RTS Starcraft and the announcement of its sequel, many gamers asked why it took so long for Blizzard to create a second chapter in an incredible successful series. Bob Colayco of Blizzard said that while the original Starcraft was based off a 2-dimensional engine, at the time most of its competitors had made the jump to 3-d technology.

Part of the success of the original involved hordes of units slugging it out in truly epic battles and nobody’s shown they can make a successful sequel quite like Blizzard. Most of making an effective sequel involves making sure you’re keeping everything people loved while adding new features and keeping the experience true to its original form. With this in mind, Blizzard made a choice that would upset many a gamer: they decided to hold off on making a sequel to Starcraft until 3-d engines were powerful and efficient enough to truly recreate the epic battles possible in the original, which apparently has only happened recently.

The first details on the upcoming Godfather sequel were disclosed by EA. The Godfather 2 will include three distinct locations – New York, Miami and Havana – and will, most importantly, feature “The Don’s View”, an RTS-type view that will have players build, defend and expand crime rings as well as keep tabs on what rival families are up to.

The game will also include “more visceral hand-to-hand brutality” and feature other strategic options. It will also feature certain story elements from the second Godfather movie, intersecting with the story in the game. While the movie was heavy on flashbacks, the game won’t be.

The Godfather 2 is in development at EA’s Redwood Shores studio for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime next year.

Studio executives have revealed that Activision Blizzard is currently in talks for the sale of World in Conflict developer Massive Entertainment following the recently completed merger between Activision and Vivendi Games.

“It seems like we have plenty of options. We’ve had some good meetings here,” said Massive founder and president Martin Walfisz. “Being a part of a merger like this is a strange situation, because obviously the new organization has to look over all of its assets, everything it owns and its strategy for the future.”

“For the past six months we’ve been waiting for the merger to go through and to under stand whether they see us as a part of their future or not,” he added. “Apparently they didn’t want an RTS studio in Europe, and to be honest we would have loved to have worked with Activision, but we’re pretty confident in our capabilities and there are not many studios that can match our quality.”

He wouldn’t say which companies have expressed interest in buying the studio, nor was he sure about the future of the console editions of World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, which is now without a publisher.

The multiplayer beta for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has begun, allowing the first 2,000 applicants to begin playing.

“We are starting the activation process with a very small pool of testers and will work to ramp this number up to thousands and thousands of Comrades around the world on a weekly basis, likely multiple times a week throughout the rest of this month and August,” wrote EALA on its website.

The studio hopes to add at least 10,000 more participants to the beta in the next wave. Currently the only way to register for the beta is to use the key that was bundled with the PC edition of Kane’s Wrath, an expansion to C&C3.

The full version of the game will be released this October on PC and Xbox 360. A PS3 version was recently cancelled citing a difficult development environment.

Following the indefinite hold of the PS3 version of Red Alert 3, EA today revealed that the PS3 version was cancelled due to development issues on the platform.

“We actually announced a PS3 version early on but that was when we were still doing a lot of technical exploration of the architecture,” said EALA producer Amer Ajami. “PS3 is a very powerful system but as you guys know it’s very exotic and tough to develop for and our engine really at the time wasn’t designed for PS3.”

He noted that the studio “might go back and do something with the PS3 later on.”

When EA put the PS3 version on indefinite hold early last month, the company only said that it was “refocusing resources” towards the other version of the game.

Red Alert 3 is due out on PC and Xbox 360 this October.