But you didn't agree with me telling you how it doesn't gel well with consoles let alone the crowd?.

If it's that easy then why aren't RTS games in the thousands on consoles?, where is all the rage about the latest RTS that isn't Halo Wars 2 for consoles?.

There would be changes made, there were changes made for the previous C&C games.

You assume the controller scheme has zero affect on anything but interfacing.

Firstly putting units into larger squads rather than individual units, you can't just change that and expect everything to work, the game would need rebalancing, potentially combat stats and attributes relating to squad units would need rebalancing, the way the squads perform calculations for damage etc would need to be redone if changed to individual units. The production cost and time of these units, the pathfinding, collision boxes... how they garrison inside a building or a transport ship... everything relating to units would need to change.

Also the difficulty. Playing the exact same game but with mouse and keyboard instead of gamepad would make the game much, MUCH easier. They'd need to add another difficulty to the AI or Campaigns otherwise the highest difficulty would be a hell of a lot easier on PC than Console.

They cannot just go "BAM WAM MOUSE AND KEYBOARDS!!!" and it not maintain a large amount of mechanics designed for console usability in mind.

Making an RTS to be console freidnly does not influence JUST the control scheme, there's a lot more to it than that.

If there's no PC version, not interested.

But considering anything Microsoft does also comes to the PC, I'll rephrase that: If there's not Windows 7/8 version, not interested.

Given that Halo Wars 2 is coming to PC and that it will come with the first Halo Wars, that didn't launch on PC, I'd say that it's almost guaranteed that this Age of Empires will also get a PC release.

Yes, but there's still the possibility that it will be a W10 exclusive. And that's no good.

Oh, I'm sure they'll be DX12 games. With MSoft, that's something that you must take for granted.

Back in the dark ages of 1997, before a console gamer knew what an Internet was, or had even had a taste of what online gaming could be... Before StarCraft burst onto the scene...

There was this little game called Age of Empires.
I used to play it daily on my 33.6kbps modem via Zone.com... My mouse even had a ball and I refused to upgrade that to a laser mouse due to it's advantages. (I.E. Flicking the mouse so the ball moves quickly allowing you to jump around the map quickly without moving the mouse itself.)
I even ranked pretty high on the leaderboard at the time.

Then Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings came out and I would dial into my neighbors 56k modem and play Co-Op. - Unfortunately my mother bought me Kings Quest instead thinking it was the game I wanted, so I couldn't play it on release until we exchanged the game.

Then we had Age of Empires 3, which was a colossal let down, why? Possibly because it deviated from a formula that worked extremely well, some of the gameplay elements seemed to have been dumbed down in favor of some RPG-like elements and the story for me left much to be desired.

Then they closed Ensemble after Halo Wars (Great console RTS, couldn't hold onto a community though, very dumbed down gameplay mechanics.) - And my hopes for the franchise died.

Basically, If Microsoft cannot bring me an Age of Empires game in the same vein that defined online PC gaming back in the 90's for me... Then they can shove it where the sun doesn't shine, I'm not interested... And I am a *massive* RTS fan, so it's a tall order.

I don't want any interface/gameplay elements/controls dumbed down due to the console release, which seems to be the path StarCraft is taking things these days, I want the frantic micro and macro management that defined the first two games.
And please put it on Steam, Windows 7.

****

As for Halo Wars 2, I'm remaining mildly optimistic, they have introduced a few changes over the first game that I like... Such as how Power is generated, giving a better resource dynamic, let's hope it can hold onto a community this time around so that it's still playable online in a year after release.

I loved Age of Empires and Age of Empires 2 was what every sequel should be: make the first game bigger and better in every possible way.

Then came Mythology, but that game didn't work for me. The Gods powers and the fantastic creatures were odd inclusions that, in my opinion, didn't fit well into the gameplay of Age of Empires. And then came AoE 3, which kept going in the wrong direction.

I really, really hope that the new Age of Empires gets based more on the first two games and forgets the last two (three if we count AoE Online).

Agreed.

Although, I did enjoy my brief stint of the mobile Age of Empires, but it felt like every other collect-a-thon-full-of-microtransactions-trying-to-be-an-RTS game. :P

Rise of Nations is more like a sequel to AoK than AoE 3 was, it's not as good as either of the first two but it's decent and definitely feels more like an Age of Empires game than the third one...

I'm not expecting too much from a new Age of Empires game, my hopes for a new traditional-style rts game rests on Cossacks 3 at the moment.