Still breathing

Troubled Canadian publisher Strategy First has announced that it will publish Battle of Europe, yet another combat flight sim set in World War II. It is being developed by MAUS Software (no relation to the classic graphic novel).

This is, of course, good news for Strategy First. There have been rumors of its imminent demise for quite a while now. There was a time not so long ago when they were publishing almost every major historical strategy game on the market plus a number of minor titles from every genre.

They were, in a way, victims of their own success. Number of titles seemed to become more important than quality and the volume of titles to publish and promote made it unlikely that it would ever turn a profit on all of them and require a huge hit to cover the losses.

And Strategy First never had the huge hit.

Not commercially at least. They had their share of critical hits. Europa Universalis I and II. Rails Across America. Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. Waterloo. But no best sellers.

According to Mobygames, 27 of the 56 games they've pubished were in one year (2002). That kind of production in a single year requires a huge budget and with no breakout game to pay for it, it must have been hard to make sure that all the bills were paid on time.

It's good to see them up and running, but publishing a flight sim from a developer no one has heard of is a long fall from their glory days of only a few years ago. I wish my fellow Canucks all the luck in the world; we'll see if they get the success that they sorely need.