From Total War To _Casual Sports Games_ [Update]

The Creative Assembly, best known as the studio behind the Total War series of PC strategy games, will soon be putting down the history books and picking up what appears holy rummy to be a pair of football boots and a…spreadsheet. A job advertisement over royally rummy on Gamasutra reveals that the company’s studio in Brisbane, Australia (the team responsible for Medieval Total War II and Stormrise, not the core team responsible for other Total War games) is gearing up for work on a “next-gen sports title” for “next-gen consoles”, which sounds like code for “not the Wii” and is about as far removed from the Total War series as you can get.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); Another advertisement, on LinkedIn, goes a little further, saying it’s “one of the biggest franchises in the games industry”, while this state industry site says it’s a “casual sports title”. Being that Creative Assembly is a Sega-owned studio, and the only sports franchise of note that Sega owns in this non-Olympic season is Football Manager, it’s not hard for the mind to start putting two and two together. Football Manager has always been a big hit with people who don’t necessarily play many other games; a “casual” version jumping from PC to console would, if successful (previous attempts have been…disappointing), surely be the end of many a marriage, especially given the PS3 and 360’s focus on online play. If, you know. That’s what this is. And it’s not Sega Pro Curling 11. UPDATE – That’ll teach me to speculate. No Football Manager game to see here, says Sega. rummy 365 There are two games in development: in the UK, CA’s console team (the PC team remains committed to Total War) is working on something “big” (though it’s not a sports game), while Sega’s Australia studio in Brisbane is working on something else. UPDATE 2 – Eurogamer reports that the game the Aussie studio is working on is…the London 2012 Olympics video game.