Sega wants Creative Assembly to focus on Total War again

Boss wants studio to concentrate on “speciality genres”

After the last-minute cancellation of live-service shooter Hyenas, which was in development at Creative Assembly, Sega Sammy CEO Haruki Satomi revealed (via VGC) that he wants the developer to refocus on what it always did best: “As part of the process of structural reform centered on Creative Assembly, we intend to optimize the workflow and concentrate their resources on the development of their specialty genres.”

This very much implies that CA will shift its resources back towards working on the Total War series, its unique real-time and turn-based strategy hybrid with massive battles, or “offline games in the RTS genre,” as Sega’s boss more simply put it.

Sega wants CA to get back to Total War / Creative Assembly

Several unannounced projects were canceled at Sega’s European studios alongside Hyenas, but with a renewed focus on Creative Assembly’s core genres it seems unlikely that any Total War title would have been included in that.

Total War: Pharaoh, made by Creative Assembly Sofia, is the series’ latest release, but could not find widespread popularity among fans despite its great review scores due to a perceived lack of content for the game’s price. Player numbers for the game currently trail those of much older entries by a lot.

CA’s current flagship is Total War: Warhammer 3, which started the year triumphantly with the widely acclaimed Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs DLC, but then got into a massive controversy due to the high price of the Shadows of Change DLC. Similar to Pharaoh, fans weren’t convinced that the contents of the expansion were worth the high asking price. Combined with a general frustration about CA’s lack of communication as well as the slow pace of bug fixes, this led to a massive revolt among fans and the review-bombing of the game on Steam.

After a series of well-received and fairly consistent patches following the release of Shadows of Change and the news that Hyenas was canceled, it looks like the developers are starting to build some trust with players again.

According to the Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC roadmap from earlier this year, the Thrones of Decay DLC is supposed to be released this year, but with only a month to go it looks like there will be a delay of the content pack. There are rumors that Creative Assembly delayed the DLC in favor of working on a free update that will add content to Shadows of Change retroactively, in a bid to make it a more complete product and measure up to fans’ expectations. Again, these are unconfirmed rumors, though fans have so far reacted pretty positively to this possibility.

Sega’s new mandate for CA may get additional resources flowing the way of the Total War: Warhammer 3 team as well, which in turn could make such a move more realistic.

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