Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
I think RTSes may be suffering from the fact that they were always sort of a hybrid genre, not quite tactical games, not quite strategy either, with some elements of both. (Individual troop-level unit control vs resource management and army building). And very, very, very much suffering from being jack of all trades, masters of none, and never making that much sense/being that realistic.
Pretty much, this has lead to RTS being outflanked on both sides - both tactics and strategy have genres that do them better (and more realistically) than RTS. And arguably a hybrid in the Total War style (even with TW's AI trouble) does BOTH strategy AND tactics better than a classic RTS.
All of this leading to a scenario where people want to exploit niches and have games that do what they do very well, rather than go with classic RTSes. Especially when, you know, going with a classic RTS means going up against Blizzard and SC2, which wouldn't sound like a winning proposal to a sane person.
All this just my, perhaps completely wrong, opinion.
Pretty much, this has lead to RTS being outflanked on both sides - both tactics and strategy have genres that do them better (and more realistically) than RTS. And arguably a hybrid in the Total War style (even with TW's AI trouble) does BOTH strategy AND tactics better than a classic RTS.
All of this leading to a scenario where people want to exploit niches and have games that do what they do very well, rather than go with classic RTSes. Especially when, you know, going with a classic RTS means going up against Blizzard and SC2, which wouldn't sound like a winning proposal to a sane person.
All this just my, perhaps completely wrong, opinion.