Seriously? I mean, that game has little more than a skirmish mode as its solo component! For chrissakes, it's a Defense of the Ancients clone! Games like that don't roll well solo.

But hey, people can do what they like with their money. As for how we came across that info, Stardock released its regular public report, hyping the success of its Impulse digital platform, but the big shocker to folks not interested in knowing about how Stardock are cool folks (shame, since they really are cool) were the usage statistics for Gas Powered Games' Demigod. Only 23% of people who bought the game - even after accounting for piracy, since Demigod was released sans DRM - actually tried to play online.

And by "tried" we mean something as little as going to the multiplayer menu and logging in. Just 23%. And it's not as if the game is a flop either (despite what Heroes of Newerth players insist), since the report notes that thousands of copies still continue to sell weekly, enough to keep the game on shelves through the holidays. Stardock had this to say regarding the observation:

Our conclusion is that strategy games that we make and publish in the future will support multiplayer but will not sacrifice the single player experience to do so. Developer Gas Powered Games has continued to update and provide support to Demigod despite its work on Supreme Commander 2. At the time of writing, two new demigods are nearly completed along with a couple of significant updates.

That's a conclusion I can definitely get behind. I'm really not a multiplayer sort of person, and all the talk about singleplayer being a dead (or dying) thing frankly scares me at times. At the same time, someone could go and fling games like Starcraft in the face of this, since that's still going strong. Then again, even Starcraft had a pretty great campaign, and Blizzard promises Starcraft II  will as well.

Let's hear you strategy gamers sound off. Are you in the 23rd or 77th percentile? How important is the campaign to you?

Square Enix announced today a partnership with Gas Powered Games, marking the first time the Japanese company has struck up a deal with a firm outside Japan. We've heard that Square Enix planned to expand west lately, and this seems to be their first step.

Gas Powered Games is best known for their Dungeon Siege RPG series, and now they'll be put to work on the sequel to the real-time strategy Supreme Commander for Square Enix. 

“This strategic partnership represents one of the first steps Square Enix ... are taking towards their goal of increasing Western development efforts aimed for the global markets,” the company said in a released statement. "Additionally, Square Enix's foray into the real-time strategy genre is a significant expansion of its product lineup.”

After this interesting first step, we wonder who Square Enix will partner with next.

[Via Edge]

Action RPG enthusiasts rejoice! Gas Powered Games founder Chris Taylor has mentioned in an interview with Eurogamer that there will be a Dungeon Siege 3. It looks like Uwe Boll’s terrible movie wasn’t enough to burry the franchise. Unlike previous games in the series -- where you lead a party (and loot carrying pack animal) through hoards of enemies -- it looks like this latest installment will contain only one playable character.

"There will be some things that are very much like Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, but some things will be simplified. I am done with multi-character parties; I really think that it's all going to be about a single hero. It's too much to manage," Taylor told Eurogamer Germany.

I guess that’s good news for the people that don’t care much about party micromanagement and just want to jump right into the hacking and slashing.

No details about an estimated release date or platform of choice were mentioned, but seeing as every game Gas Powered Games have developed were for the PC -- which Taylor still has plenty of faith in -- it seems likely that’s what it will come out on. Don’t rule it out eventually showing up on consoles, though. Hellbent Games Xbox 360 port of Supreme Commander shows that it could certainly be a possibility.

We’ll probably start receiving some more news once Gas Powered Games' current project, Space Siege, is released later this year. Is anyone looking forward to sieging some dungeons?