Even a half hearted RTS would be better recived, how can they not know that?
Good luck convincing an exec to give you 200 million $ to make a new RTS for the 50 player based market out there who's playing the oldies anyway: AOE, RA, SC, etc.
It's a small and saturated market that's long been fished out and no point investing into, other than HD remakes/remasters of previously mentioned established IP.
Probably best RTS game going on currently is Beyond All Reason, and that's because guys are doing it as an open source clone/followup to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander Alliances and not actual business (but they started to look for a way to monetize it to fund future development).
Given that Marathon is unlikely to ever make a profit, Tempest Rising technically made infinitely more in profits than Marathon did.
Choosing the biggest flop as your benchmark is a very poor argument. If you lose half as much money as Marathon, you're technically twice as good, but it's still a flop and investors and publishers want successes, not half flops.
Marathon existing does not justify the investments into new RTS games. Quite the contrary. Marathon got hundreds of millions in cash because the shooter genre was making billions (at the time) so for them it was worth the gamble even if they lost. But the RTS genre is not making nearly enough money to justify Marathon levels of gambling on new IPs.
Two shooters were making billions at the time Marathon began pre-production (Fortnite and Destiny). Only two other live-service AAA shooters have made back their budgets (Apex Legends and The Division). Most live-action shooters generated huge losses; even Destiny wasn't doing great anymore by the time Sony acquired Bungie. Sony itself had a horrendous track record with live-service games (of any genre). Other than Final Fantasy Online they have no profitable live-service games developed internally (Destiny and Helldivers are both acquisitions).
But the RTS genre is not making nearly enough money to justify Marathon levels of gambling on new IPs.
We agree on the first half of that statement, but (a) RTS games don't need Marathon levels of gambling to be successful and (b) live-service shooters also aren't worth the gamble of Marathon levels of spending. Tempest Rising cost less than $10 million to develop, which is less than 1/25th of what Marathon cost. Starcraft 2, the most expensive RTS of all time, cost about $150 million (in today's dollars) and made that back in its first month and made at least $240 million in revenue before going free-to-play. COH3 cost somewhere between $25m and $50m, and earned approximately $50m in sales but also received significant tax incentives in Canada, for a modest profit. On the AA front, Iron Harvest cost approximately $5 million and grossed $15m ($10m going to the studio), for a 100% profit. Similarly, Zerospace has grossed over $5 million on a $2.5m budget.
Meanwhile, Fortnite, Destiny, Marathon, and Apex Legend revenues have all been trending downhill for several years. All of the studios behind these games have had sizable layoffs. Sony has lost more on Marathon alone than every AA and AAA RTS game's development budget in the last decade. To put it bluntly: the era of the live-service shooter is almost as dead as the RTS era. Fortnite is the only thing keeping the genre alive.
Objectively speaking, if the goal is to make a profit, RTSs are a lower risk than shooters. If the goal is to lose money, make a live-action shooter.
Other games having done bad is not proof that your unique RTS will do good. That's my argument.
> If the goal is to lose money, make a live-action shooter.
When your examples that lost money got the green light to start development, the shooter market was very different which is why they got all that money to begin with. But then you take 5-7 years to ship, and by that time the market has changed, so they lost the gamble but that doesn't mean that at the time it was a bad business decision.
Meanwhile new RTS is known for the start it won't make any money since the young players are captured by MOBAs and boomers still play the OGs. That's also my argument.
>Objectively speaking, if the goal is to make a profit, RTSs are a lower risk than shooters.
Feel free to put your money where your mouth is. THere's some indie RTS games out there who probably need some money.
No, it wasn't. You are just ignoring the dates. When Marathon got the green light, the shooter industry was already a feast-or-famine niche, with most entrants starving to death.
Meanwhile new RTS is known for the start it won't make any money since the young players are captured by MOBAs and boomers still play the OGs. That's also my argument.
Which is false. Almost every AA and AAA RTS in the last decade has made a profit. My point is that they don't make much of a profit, but a small profit is better than a huge loss.
Feel free to put your money where your mouth is. THere's some indie RTS games out there who probably need some money.
I probably already have purchased them.
By the way, I used to work in the video game industry, so my knowledge is firsthand.
Which AAA RETS games? How much profit?
What are existing players missing from Starcraft 2 to justify buying Starcraft 3 so that Blizzard can justify the money to develop it?
There's quite a few new RTS games coming out
And how many copies are they gonna sell? How big is their player base?
All important things bean counters want to know before they pony up north of seven figures of investor money into another RTS and not into another looter shooter instead with a 100x revenue and 100x player base.
That seems like the obvious player base for a Starcraft 3, and it seems more than large enough for a major release.
GTA 6 preorders beat that in like a week and the game isn't even out and no gameplay footage was even show.
>That seems like the obvious player base for a Starcraft 3
A lot of that player based has aged out of the game or will stick to playing SC2 instead of spending 80-100$ on buying the same game over again. RTS have reached diminishing returns. There's not much more you can add to SC2 to improve it and convince people to spend on buying a new game. SC2 is feature complete.
Really? That's going to be your measuring stick? So anything that isn't as successful as GTA 6 is a failure that shouldn't ever exist again? In fact any genre that isn't as successful as GTA 6 should just be wholesale cancelled?
A game is successful if it makes a profit. Other games making more profit doesn't suddenly make them failures. This isn't a zero-sum game.
> A lot of that player based has aged out of the game
What does this even mean? Gamers don't "age out". We're long past the era of pretending Nintendo is a children's toy...
StarCraft: Ghost all over again.
This is probably the safest thing they could do with the genre from a business perspective.
A shooter is a high risk high-reward endeavor. The track record for shooters for the past 5 years is actually much worse than it has been for RTS games, but the ceiling for success is much higher. In 2026 alone, several AAA shooters have failed in the market. Most of the shooters released in the past 2 years have failed to survive. The few that succeeded made a lot of money.
SC2 is my favorite game of all time and I would love nothing more than an SC3. But if there ever is to be a real spiritual successor it won't be from Blizzard.