An apparent and becoming a prevalent trend in PC games perhaps is higher pricepoints, and C&C3TW is one of these games. The standard edition costs $50 and the LE costs $60. This might damper sales a little. To me it just feels unjust to charge that much for PC games when publishers don't have to pay a company royalties like on consoles. http://www.gamestop.com/gs/cnc3/default.asp
Westwood is gone; they were acquired by EA, after which many employees left. After that, they were liquidated by EA and people who wanted to were merged into EA.
I think westwood is looking more into Graphics and Storyline with this one rather than having a new gameplay. Me, personally, I like having the bars to the right of the screen with everything that I need to know to make buildings, ships, tanks, defence, a power gauge and stuff like that. Id say that for the fast pace of the C&C games, they are making the ai a lot more handy in the last C&C rather than having the ai set up to build a box with Massive defense, make a bunch of ore gatherers, and roll out to kill your enemy. As you can guess, after a while of playing, the ai became way too predictable for any fun in the previous C&Cs.
I really hope this game turns out better than C&C generals. This one definitely needs new gameplay to compete with supreme commander. However, the screenshots that have came out so far do not display this.
Xen911, your image submissions messed up on the thumbnail previews. You need the actual picture file in the thumbnail field. You can edit your submission from the Community section.
C&C is pretty much selling on the name, but coming on the next gen systems I'm positive that EA can deliver. Supreme Commander is not necessarily a competing title, it's just for RTS gamers with more refined tastes. :P
The graphics look great but the gameplay better be overhauled. C&C games have been the same thing but improved graphics for several games now. I think Chris Taylor's Supreme Commander will be a better bet.
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http://www.gamestop.com/gs/cnc3/default.asp