SEGA have moved to share their RTS strengths, appointing Creative Assembly director Tim Heaton as the interim General Manager over at their newly-acquired Relic studio.

“We are currently looking for a full-time general manager at Relic, so my role in this phase is to keep the studio focused on delivering COH2, to find the necessary staff to take Relic into the future and to ease the transition,” Heaton said to CVG.

“Sega bought Relic because they could see the staffs’ depth of ability and knowledge in the PC strategy space. The studio has had a tough time in the past few years with a publisher struggling to support them, but it’s a testament to the way Relic works that it has had great staff retention, and that it has focused on making Company of Heroes 2 a great game.”

Heaton added that “there are no plans to tie the two studios together”, but did confirm that SEGA was “already seeing knowledge feed back from Relic into CA.”

Source: CVG

SEGA’s acquisition of Relic from the burning wreckage of the THQ fire sale was one hell of a smart move. If you’d told me fifteen years ago that SEGA would have not only stopped making consoles, but gone on to become one of the juggernauts of the RTS market, I would have probably laughed at you. Laughed at you, and then ran like hell as you chased me through the corridors of my high school and demanded my lunch money.

Instead, fifteen years and $56 million later, SEGA now makes zero consoles but owns both The Creative Assembly and Relic — two companies who together make up some of the biggest names in the RTS genre, and a genre practically exclusive to PC.

So what does it all mean? Let’s take a look.

SEGA have confirmed yesterday’s news that they have acquired Relic from THQ.

“SEGA Corporation acquired all of shares of THQ Canada Inc. and some IPs owned by THQ Inc., a parent company of THQ Canada on January 24, 2013 in order to further reinforce PC game development capabilities in the U.S. and European regions,” reads the statement.

“We are thrilled to have Relic Entertainment join the SEGA family,” the statement continues. “The acquisition is a strategic fit and a critical step in growing our business (…) They are a well-respected studio with a reputation for making creative and innovative games and we look forward to seeing what great things we can create together over the coming years.”

With both Creative Assembly and Relic now wholly owned by SEGA, the company has suddenly captured a huge portion of the PC RTS market and give itself a potentially important advantage over companies like Blizzard. It’ll be interesting to see if SEGA puts the two studios on a two-year turnaround schedule, with alternating Total War and Company of Heroes titles each year. We’ll see!

Source: Blue’s News

In 2011, Relic released their first non-RTS game – a third person action game called Space Marine. After finally picking it back up and playing the last hour of the game on the Christmas break, Tim got to thinking: how can a game in which you play as a genetically engineered superhuman make you feel so weak?